Exposed: Being Seen and Heard

I feel all alone in the middle of my aunt and uncle’s living room. There are a lot of big people in the room, all related to me, but I don’t really know most of them. It is my fourth birthday. I have been given a gift – a large rag doll almost my size with elastic on her feet designed to be pulled over my shoes. Someone commands me to put the doll’s feet on mine. Another command follows, “Come on, dance with her.” What do I do? There is no music and all these people are watching me. I don’t know what to do or how to be. But they are expecting me to perform. Please God who I still believe in, let this moment end. I do not want to be watched.

My fourth grade teacher brings a new machine to our classroom. It is a tape recorder. She commands each of us to speak into the machine as we read a passage in our readers. She plays the tape back for everyone to hear. I nearly die of embarrassment. I hate the sound of my voice and don’t quite believe that it is me. It does not make the same sound as it does to my ears.

I do not want to be heard.  

I sit in 7^th grade social studies and pray for invisibility so I will not become a target. There are already two targets in my class, a boy named Bruce, a girl named Cindy. They have done nothing to deserve all the fun made at their expense by some of the boys in my class. Looking around at everyone else, I calculate that on the misfit scale, I would probably be the next one at whom they’d take aim. I shrink in my seat and bend over my text book looking down.

I do not want to be noticed.

I sit in my 11^th grade English class and listen as my classmates talk and laugh about the party Saturday night at George’s house – to which I was not invited. I tell myself I don’t care, I wouldn’t have gone anyway. I wouldn’t have known how to be with them. They talk over me, ignoring me, not unkindly, just not anything.  I wonder if I have achieved the invisibility for which I have prayed from the God I now doubt.

I sit in a women’s group in my early twenties and find it hard to take my turn. When the timer rings (so no one hogs all the time, as some might) and our charismatic leader with piercing eyes turns her attention to me and commands that I pound a pillow and emote, the real me vacates the premises, leaving the play actor behind to perform on demand.   

There are many similar stories. I recall them with sadness and sometimes detachment, sometimes curiosity. But as my daughter and others of her generation might say, “It is what it is.” Or was what it was.  I know that these tiny events (and they are tiny in the grand scheme) have defined me in ways that are difficult to escape. I am who I am despite multi-year efforts to change that.

Writing from the heart is the epitome of exposure and an act of courage (or foolishness) for someone who aimed emotionally for invisibility and silence for years. I never press “post” without wondering if I’ve said too much or been too honest. I feel pleased when my words resonate with others and am grateful to those who respond from their own hearts and share their experiences. In those moments, I feel connected, heard, and visible in ways that are tolerable and pleasant.  

I emailed a few blog entries to a relative around Christmas. I handpicked some that I thought she might particularly enjoy – reflections about the holidays, an entry about my brother. Nothing that I thought would kindle any fires. So I didn’t see the meteor coming when she wrote me that she doesn’t understand why I don’t write about another relative who “loved you [me] so much, maybe too much.” I started to tremble with something approaching rage. The message I sent back was clear and direct. Do not tell me what or who I should write about. I don’t write to meet your needs. 

                             

Put another way, I will no longer dance because someone has commanded me to dance.

                            

I snail mailed some entries to an elderly friend I’ve known for over forty years. When I was 16, she used to read my adolescent attempts at poetry. She is always interested in knowing what I’m doing so I thought she might enjoy reading some of my current efforts. We used to be quite close but in recent years I’ve kept my distance. I grew up with her pointing out every discrepancy she found in what I had to say.  Even as an adult, she’ll remind me of something I said or thought when I was 19 and demands that I justify any changes in my viewpoint. Frankly, I often just don’t have the emotional strength to endure her questioning. The other day I received a telephone message from her. She’d read my work, some entries two and three times. She loved my writing. So far, so good. But then she said she’d like me to call her back. She wanted me to talk to her about some of the things I’d written.  “When you’re ready,” she said. That sounded ominous. Rewind.  “When you’re ready.”  Every danger antennae in me went on high alert.  My emotional brakes engaged. If she wants to share her story with me, relative to something I’ve written, great, I thought, wonderful. That’s what this is all about.

But I will no longer speak because someone has commanded me to speak.