"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." Maya Angelou
What are the untold stories, what is it that we are too afraid to speak of, which part of our lives begs to be hidden, and who is asking this of us?
Where did the term, “airing your dirty laundry” come from and who finds comfort when we tuck away our imperfections, our unsightly wounds, the places where we lost ourselves… the roads that led to nowhere?
To whose benefit is it that Reality’s clothesline be free of the so-called dirty stuff?
What do they consider dirty and what is so unsightly for the line?
Again I can see the two sides of airing, who is letting it out and who is seeing it.
Which person is the one stopping this and who decides clean from dirty?
What is dirty laundry, period?
Is dirty laundry only the things that go against a previous image? Are they things that will not make you ‘look’ better, but rather be cracks and crevices, lumps and bumps?
Do people actually make it off the planet without a crack?
Are there perfectly whole and unbroken people out there?
I would like to see us celebrate the imperfects in the world, where we are applauded for showing our cracks, and for the greatest person to be the one who has the most.
To be busted a million times and still want to live and reach for another tomorrow, another hope, another breath, to have the faith to go on…shattered.
Shattered and soiled were the untold stories of me, their truths lay hidden in the basket of dirty laundry, and it was I who had to rescue them and air them out.
Unfurling their truths and hang them up for the entire world to see… crumpled unsightly and smeared with my bloody childhood wounds, all unraveled and exposed… my history, my storyline.
Perhaps I would like to challenge Ms. Maya Angelou and say, there is a greater agony, it is having people turn away from you as you tell your untold story.
To have it fall on deaf ears, to have it challenged, to stand with all your dirty laundry and have them no longer interested in being with you, to be rejected for who you are, to feel their indifference again, hurt much more than the original wound.
To me the greater agony was not being believed of them not seeing me in all my broken spots…in being rejected for my truth.
I can understand why people don’t speak of the untold story and bear the agony of its silence, for it is worse to speak of it and hear only silence and feel the wrath of defense against you.
As I stood defending my clothesline and all my dirty underwear, I found it wasn’t shameful or something to hide, it didn’t weaken me or break me further, in did the opposite.
It made me stronger and deeper, more complex and introspective, my views broadened and my heart expanded with awareness and my indifferences melted. I learned how to become caring and loving towards myself.
I had to love and defend the darkest parts of me in order to know what love was.
I recall reading that the opposite of love isn’t hate, but indifference and I now believe that you become indifferent when you hide parts of you away.
You become careless with parts of yourself, and slowly you lose who you are.
