How Can I Talk To You?

I don't know how to talk to you. I don't think I ever knew.

We can rhapsodize about music and art and pedagogy. We can enter into intellectual, philosphical debates about everything under the sun. We can challenge, question, and agree or disagree about all of it. We feed from this discourse, our blood and our thoughts and our passions pump through us, invigorating and sustaining us. We are alive, and we are together.

But when it comes to me, the way I live my life, the choices and the paths I take, we look at eachother like strangers. We speak different languages. Our biorhythms clash. Our faces and feelings become alien. Judgement and fear and regret pound our beings so hard, we can barely find our footing. We lose the ground. We lose eachother.

And we don't know what to do. We don't have a clue.

I came to you with news--great news, I thought. News that excited me and represented change, hope for a future more in-line with who I am and who I want to be. I came to you, eager to share and rejoice in the possibility of the unknown. I came to you, for the first time, as an equal, as the friendly confidant and companion I've always hoped we could become. But you tore me down.

The voice I heard was full of worry and condescention. The words and the questions were not of support, not one of them, but of criticism and fear of failure. Your viewpoint was so far away from mine, so unwilling to meet me where I needed you.

I immediately jumped the fence, becoming defensive and emotional. I became the angry teenager, stomping down the hallway and slamming the door twice just to be sure you heard it.

I hung up the phone disillusioned, disappointed, hurt. You hung up the phone in tears. I called to create a connection, a bond I've rarely felt with you, and I hung up farther down that hallway than ever.

I want--I need--you to see me as a capable adult. I need you to let me make my own mistakes, regardless of what you've learned or experienced in your life. I need you to believe that I will be okay and I will make a life worth living. I need you to care about me, but not doubt me. I need you to realize that you might not have all the answers, you might not know everything about what is right for me. I need you to let me go.

I thought you said I could do anything I wanted, be anything I wanted. I thought you said I was special.

Then why, the first time I've EVER stepped out of my comfort zone--both in my life and in my communications with you--did you stomp all over my dreams? Why couldn't you, for once, tell me that the universe would support me and allow for magic to arrive, finally, after long last? Why couldn't you be a cheerleader for my happiness and fulfillment, not the dollar amount on a paycheck? Why?

Maybe you never actually said that I could do anything, be anything. Maybe it was a figment of my imagination. Or maybe you said it, but never really believed it.

And that lack of faith, that skepticism, is something I do not and will not accept. It is something I do not, will not understand.

This is why I don't know how to talk to you. This is why I choose not to.