Imagine being that sensitive and attuned to the emotional states of others, that you can sense when there’s something not-quite-right with them before they themselves become aware of it. Imagine being this way because. parentified by your mother as you are, the only way you’d feel secure and safe is if you could suss out if she was feeling okay.
Imagine that this ‘superpower’ comes at a cost to you. That you have to pay for this by losing the ability to ever articulate that you’re not okay, that someone or something hurt you. Imagine feeling sad and feeling bad for feeling sad. Imagine not being able to speak of this to the person who was supposed to hold you and be there for you, if you ever got this way.
Imagine internalizing this to the extent that you believed that this was the only way you had to be – to earn a modicum of care, affection or respect from anyone you selected as a friend or partner.
Imagine that you’d only be able to select as a friend or a partner the kind of person who could suss this out about you, right away – your mute and wide-open vulnerability and your ability to anticipate what they’d need from you, if there’d be something wrong with their world.
Imagine this becoming so perverse, that the only kind of person you’d gravitate towards is someone who wouldn’t do what your mother couldn’t – get you to speak about what you liked, didn’t like, wanted or needed.
Imagine this lodging at the core of your perception and cognition to the extent that the only measure of well-being in a relationship that you had, was if a friend or partner could extend themselves to suss out what you might want, at any given moment, from your muteness and articulated that for you.
You’d give that person all of yourself and your future, in that moment. Without a moment’s hesitation. As I have. Thrice. For a total of thirty-two years. Of the fifty that I have lived.
There’s a flip side to muteness…
Think that of spectators to a horror unfolding before their eyes. That they could stop, mitigate or prevent, if they acted, intervened or responded. Could they be accused of aiding and abetting if they remained watching in vicarious silence as it played out?
Think of being hurt and injured by someone you turned over your future to – so deeply and over a sustained length of time that you can no longer remain silent. That you have to cry out and let them know what they’re doing to you. And how. While you’re raging within because you’re having to break out of your silence in doing so. And they’re not listening.
You committed your life to them, because they ‘promised’ to be able to sense what affected you and to keep you safe, from the harm someone like them had already caused you. When you hadn’t even realized – the nature of the damage done and its extent.
You didn’t even have the words or a frame to situate it in – to ask if it could be undone and what it would take and how long. They held you at your most broken and vulnerable and committed to the one thing that they wouldn’t do.
And, you realize, in slowly dawning shock and horror, that it is the only thing they cannot help doing and how…
Imagine your crying out to them – to stop what they’re doing being met with denial. Imagine being so hurt that you’ll not rest with their denial. Imagine responding with a description of exactly what happened and how and in what context and at what points in time.
Imagine hearing them accuse you next of misunderstanding and mischaracterizing their intent, in response. Imagine being thrown off at this because you haven’t said anything about intent.
Imagine telling them this, only to have them accuse you of something you said or did some other time. Imagine starting to lose your mind at what’s going on – at how they’re unable to hear you when you’re actually speaking and clearly.
Imagine the deafening roar that’s trying to mute you back – to how you’ve been. To silence.
Imagine being able to speak about what’s happening to you, finally.
Imagine being able to describe what is being done to you and how. Imagine that you’ve got yourself together and found your voice – enough to be able to say something about it, at least, if not stop or prevent it.
Imagine not being able to go back to mute ever again.
Imagine this slowly dawning on the person you’re trying to get to hear you. Imagine seeing their countenance harden and contort as they now accuse you of hurting them with what you’re describing of them.
Imagine them registering the disssonance on your face as you encounter this and doubling down on their accusations and readying to explode in a nasty and violent reflex of – But you also … but you always … but you never…
Imagine not being able to hold onto what you’re saying any more. Imagine recognizing that they still haven’t responded to what you were describing in the first place …
Imagine fighting through this while refusing to engage with whatever they’re throwing at you and re-drawing focus and attention to what you started with. Imagine them deciding to walk out and away as they realize that they cannot wear you down in this manner any more.
Imagine the shock of the dissonance that hits you then, because just the other night they whispered sweet nothings to you and swore undying love for you. Imagine letting them leave because there’s nothing you can do, other than appeal to them – which is what you were attempting to do.
Imagine not having been told if and when they’ll be back to resolve what happened. Imagine not being told that they’ll return to pick it up with you. Imagine dealing with the flux of conflicting emotions – confusion, hurt, anger, flashbacks of trauma, and an overwhelming sense of their rejection, disdain, dismissal, condescension, violation of trust…
Imagine being so overwhelmed by past trauma of exactly this. Imagine flashing back to how this threw you into psychosis, destroyed your mind and body, reduced you to isolation for over seven years and gave you a heart attack before you’d even turned thirty.
Imagine the overwhelming despair and hopelessness at what you’ve gotten into, all over again.
Imagine the voice and integrity you’ve found not being able to rest. Imagine not being able to tolerate this kind of re-traumatization any more.
Imagine imagining that you’d still be able to show them what they’re doing.
Imagine being unable to believe that the last thing they can bear to see – is what they’ve done or are doing. Imagine being unable to process that what you encountered – as you naively (or stupidly, which is just as valid) tried to show them – was the one thing that they would not be able to tolerate, acknowledge or respond to.
Imagine that everything that they hit you with, stemmed from the indescribable horror of being compelled to see themselves as they are and what they do.
Imagine not being able to rest at being cut off as you were. Imagine the need to be heard pushing you to write out to them – describing what they did, the effect it had and what it meant. Imagine being unable to imagine what they know to do next.
Silence. Punctuated by a context-free and casual Okay. Imagine them telling you that that’s what they say without reading anything of what you’ve been saying.
They’ve still not acknowledged what you said. Response is silent.
Imagine they had just promised you, all over again, they they would be careful to heed a gentle flag from you, if they were doing what they had been doing and how. Imagine them holding you close while telling you how they’re going to give this a fresh start from a blank slate. Imagine it not being even a week since.
Imagine how they had apologized fervently for what they had done to you and how you never deserved any of it. Imagine how you could not doubt or question how they spoke – about nobody deserving or having to put up with this degee of agony, torment and suffering.
Imagine the split in their reality between what they can say so easily and their silence now.
Imagine not being able to wrap your head or imagination around how they can say something like that, while you were at your most vulnerable, emotionally, and then completely losing sight of what they promised, assured, and asserted that they recognized, took responsibility for and asked to be held to accountable to.
Imagine what it must be like in their mind to witness cries of hurt, pain and confusion and still remain mute to all of it. Imagine not being able to register their own agency in what they do and how.
Imagine knowing what – silence of the kind they’re treating you to – can do to your mind and body. Imagine being able to claim and assert, on reflex, that they don’t know what it does.
Imagine doing it again and again after that. Imagine seeing how it wears someone down, to submission and supply.
Imagine returning at that point to abuse vulnerability by violating personal space and boundaries with fervent apologies and promises all over again. Imagine being so broken and isolated that it’s impossible to resist, to disbelieve them.
Imagine learning over time that this is what they do and will not stop these cycles which can be predicted now with terrifying accuracy. Imagine drawing a line around yourself and deciding to not respond to any of this. Imagine deciding to resume from where they broke off.
Imagine the horror of their face turning to stone at encountering this. Imagine them now not even caring to mask their contempt which has partitioned off their face unequally and simultaneously into a scowl and a smirk.
Imagine how theycannot imagine that you’re not willing to forget and let go of what happened. Which they did not acknowledge. Nor respond to.
Imagine them now unleashing a litany of monstrous accusations, distortions and mischaracterizations of what they have imagined you did to them. Imagine how they have nursed these to feed toxic resentment and cultivate and weaponize a grudge against you.
Imagine being unable to help doing what they’re doing to you because you were the only one able to stay long enough with them, to look past their carefully cultivated mask. Into a soul that isn’t there.
They wanted you because you claimed to be able to see them. They did not anticipate that you’d not rest with what they wanted you to see. And validate it for them.
They did not expect that you’d be able to see what’s actually there. IF anything’s there.
Satyre 