Speaking

So, yesterday I had a very weird experience... weird for me.

I don't want to talk about what led to this experience - rather, it is the feelings involved that are important.

I was in a situation where I had an opportunity to speak to my mind, discuss my feelings and even air my grievances but, when the moment came, I was unable to do so. The last time I checked, this wasn't a problem for me. At work, if I need to, I'm able to raise my concerns and give my opinion, even if it goes against the consensus. If people upset me in my personal life - I'm usually able to find the words to have a conversation about the said problem. I wouldn't say that I was afraid of confrontation particularly. I mean, I don't like it, but if it has to happen - if it is essential to clear the air, or the only way to make yourself heard, well then, fine. The thought of an argument does not unnerve me. 

I'd been thinking about this particular moment for quite some time. I even thought a little about what I'd want to say and how I'd want to say it. I would even go so far as to say, I was ready for an argument, should it happen. In this example, I have the moral high ground - I am not the guilty party, but rather the injured. Right is on my side, I thought.

But - when the opportunity revealed itself - actually, was on its knees begging to be had, I just didn't have the words to speak. 

Afterwards, I was annoyed. I'm not sure if I'll get this chance again. I console myself with the notion that sharing my thoughts probably wouldn't have changed anything - it wouldn't make things different, I'd just feel a little better, I suppose. I could have scored a tiny moral victory and kept the triumph for myself - I'd have been the only one to feel it. The flip-side to this coin is - I didn't play my hand and make myself emotionally vulnerable, which could have been much worse.

If this chance comes again, I need to choose my battlefield better. Sometimes, you can be outnumbered, but where you choose to fight is half of the battle. I overlooked this. It's interesting how much of a difference the location can make.

I think, also, that the other person involved in this has an advantage. They intimidate me. 

This comes to mind:

Regression

noun

• 1a return to a former or less developed state:

  it is easy to blame unrest on economic regression

I didn't find my voice - my ability to stand up for myself, at the very earliest, until I went to College. It has taken a lot of therapy for me to even acknowledge that I'm allowed to speak, that my feelings are just a valid and worthwhile as anything anyone else wishes to say. 

I spent my teenage years desperately seeking approval from people that would never give it. I used to be a terrible people-pleaser. I was never popular. I didn't have many friends. I was frightened to say and do the things I wanted and so I'd let myself do the things other people wanted in the hope that they might like me. It didn't help that I always felt horribly different anyway, and so it was probably better to be like them. At the time, I didn't realise that all the ways that I was different were precisely all the ways that made me special. It never occurred to me that it was OK to just be myself.

People that know me now find it hard to believe that I was bullied. 
Or more to the point, that I allowed myself to be bullied. 

I probably do over-compensate for this now and I am very different. I don't care what other people think about me. Life is too short to be sensitive about what other people think.

It's precisely this fact, and the fact that I still am able to be catapulted by some people, back into those horrible, awkward teenage years, to a time where I am continually anxious, worried, where I don't know what to say, or how to say it, and when I do have the words, I'm too terrified to dare to voice them that upsets me so. This isn't me. Why am I acting this way? Why am I not talking? Heaven for-fend that someone else is hurt by the things I have a right to say. 

I can't believe myself sometimes.