Words

By Melissa K. Sances

I don't often surprise myself, or, I imagine, anyone else, because I think I appear very even-keeled. I don't get angry or flustered easily. I rarely yell or blush, and I almost never cry.

I have mastered repressing any strong emotion, so much so that I often have no idea what I feel until I force myself to write.

As a child I was a consummate nerd, dutifully bringing home A+ papers decorated with smiley faces and "Super!" stickers. I excelled because I could and felt I should. But I remember sitting silently in the second grade, cross-legged and anonymous among some 20-odd peers as my teacher, Mr. Tassinari, prompted us for answers. I screamed them in my head, almost whispered a few, and I was always right. But always, I said nothing, paralyzed by my potential to be discovered: wrong.

In fact I talked as little as possible so I could stay secretly infallible - mutely invincible.

In the fourth grade, Mr. Harold, a beautiful, balding, jolly giant, instructed the class to write - about anything. I don't recall what I wrote, but I remember rising out of my seat again and again to grab a few more sheets of flaky, yellow-lined paper to fill with all those pent-up words.

They came out naturally and sensibly, and occasionally, eloquently. Their energy surprised me - their emotion, their personality. I was in those words. Those words were me.

As part of a final exam today I wrote an essay on Virginia Woolf and her attempt in Monday or Tuesday to capture the importance of the unsaid.

"Life is often explained away as a mutable but consistent plot," I wrote. "Our days are measured in hours and minutes, and within those ready-made boundaries we further segment our time. We awaken, usually in the morning, and we act: we eat, usually three meals a day; we work, generally for eight hours; we sleep, preferably at night. Throughout the day we interact with our environment, and, somehow, it even becomes part of the action, interweaved into the day's events as the people we speak to, the objects we touch, the places we frequent."

"But as we move through life our mind is always at work, subconsciously evaluating what readily acknowledge and what we don't seem to notice…"

When we were discussing Woolf in class, Dr. Nelles had said something to the effect of, "If someone asks you how your day is going, you start talking about all the things you did. But 5,000 things went on in your head that day, and you're never going to tell anybody about any of it."

I notice recently how little I actually say. I spend the better part of each day writing in my head - starting letters, finishing leads, returning to reflections-in-progress. But I keep almost all my words to myself, and lately I haven't been able to get them onto the page. There are so many, I'm not quite sure where I am.

So-

and I'm afraid these may be the wrong words, because it's out-of-character/distinctly uncomfortable for me to solicit anyone's assistance-

if suddenly I approach you and catch you off-guard with at least a few of my words, I would be grateful if you encouraged me to keep talking - until we've both discovered that I have surprised myself.