When I Disappear

As open book as I am, there are topics I don’t write about here for any number of reasons. Often, I am busy protecting the stories of the others, respecting their boundaries and allowing them their own space to live their own story. Like how I don’t write about the fact that, yes, I do have personal experience with reunion in my family. Like any number of any other things that get too far into the nitty gritty of who we are and why we’re here and what we’re doing. I won’t write some things because I don’t want to.

But sometimes…

Sometimes I can’t write some things because… because I can’t.

I’m rarely wordless. I have lots to say. About lots of things.

But there are topics. There are things. There are emotions and experiences and bouts of depression and feelings and fears and thoughts that I just can’t put out into the great wide open. As much as I’d like to credit myself that I’m just “taking care of me” and “respecting my own boundaries,” it’s not that. Or, it is sometimes. But, with some things, the words simply won’t form.

Sometimes it’s because I’ve blocked something out and have no ability to even go there to form the words, to even find the memories. Sometimes it’s because I know what I want to say… and I don’t want to say it out loud. I don’t want it to be real. I don’t want me to know I feel a certain way, let alone you. And so I’m silent. I don’t go there.

People say things, even with good intentions, not knowing. Or maybe not understanding even if they know. And I blink, force myself to smile and nod. I stumble over some answer I’ve formed over the years. I look away. I disappear inside of myself, somewhere between a memory and a prayer that this conversation will end. Soon.

But it won’t. It doesn’t. It will continue. And I’ll just keep smiling and nodding and stumbling and disappearing.