Warning: naughty language ahead!

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An old lover of mine recently posted on social media:

“You’re going to date a few cowards before you meet someone brave enough to love you.”

My initial response: What a fucker.
My sarcastic response: Jeez, thanks.
My annoyed response: But wait…I thought you didn’t believe in love?
My snarky response: Shit…she must be brave to love you.
My snarkier response: Mirror mirror.

My “take the higher ground” response: I’m so glad you’ve found someone to love you. We all deserve that. (Followed by the gag reflex.)
My “holier than thou” response: Well, sounds like you’ve done your work and are now ready to receive love. (You fucker.)

And then, I wrote.

I spewed onto the page instead of spewing all over him and his oh so kind post, full of interesting points of view—and this is what emerged:

That thing that you’ve wanted to say,
To let loose and just say it,
Yet you catch yourself…

You hold back.
“It’s not nice,” you tell yourself.
(And lord knows how many times your mama told you, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”)

You judge yourself: “I shouldn’t feel/think/react that way.”

You judge yourself some more: “That’s a shitty thing to say/think/feel. I should take the high ground here.”

You judge yourself even more: “This shouldn’t bother me so much.”

So you tuck that thing you really want to spit out—splurt out, roar out—and you press it down a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more.

Until one day, you just can’t take it anymore. All of those pressed down, unspoken words and energies that have compressed and compacted into themselves so much that it takes a lot of energy to blast them out, well—you blast them out and they get spewed all over the place.

And you vomit all over
The barista
Or the barber
Or the child
Or the dog
Or the bartender
Or your date
Or your dad,
Who just happen to be the straw
That broke the camel’s back.

It all comes out of you in a fit of rage,
Fury,
Unabashed,
Uninhibited.

Raaarrrrrr, fuuucccckkkkk yooouuuu!

You let it out
And it feels so fucking good;
So fucking good.

Until it’s out
And you realize

You just vomited all over some innocent person who is only guilty of being in that place at that moment, reminding you of all the past moments where you didn’t speak up and share what was moving through you.

And oh fuck,
There is vomit
Made up of all of those
Past
Unspoken
Words and energies
Spewed all over your
Present.

And as you stand there
Seeing it all laid out before you,
Stinky and smelly and rotting and fermenting,

You notice
A lightness in your body,
A softness in your belly,
A quiet in your head,
A thumping in your heart.

And rather than feeling ashamed,
Rather than running away,
You face this innocent person
Covered with your past spew
And give humble thanks
And apologies.

“Thank you so much for being the one to trigger that outburst. Thank you for being the one I finally felt able to express all of this to.

I am so sorry to put all of this out on you. I know it’s not really you—none of this is really you. Maybe like, .0005 percent of this is you. But really, it’s all me. It’s all the stuff I have held back for a long time. It’s all the stuff I haven’t been willing to say.

I’m really sorry I’ve made a mess out of the present moment with you. Yet I’d like to clean it up, if you’ll let me. Cause now that I’ve gotten all of this out of me, I can actually see it more clearly, clean it up more completely, and after that, I can move on more fully as me, without that huge weight decaying inside of me anymore.”

After the clean up,
After repairing
The damage done
With this other person

You repair
The damage done
With yourself

Or perhaps
That comes first.

You look yourself in the mirror
And honor yourself for letting it all come out;
It wasn’t pretty,
It wasn’t grace in action
But it was a great release,
And now that it is all out,
You commit to yourself
That from this moment forward,
No more tucking inside what you wish to say,
No more pressing and compacting and denying
What it is that’s bubbling up inside of you.

You commit to yourself
That from this moment forward,
You’ll let yourself
Speak whatever comes through
Or you’ll write it down
Write it out.

You’ll move it out of you.

You see how
So much of the baggage
You’ve been carrying around
Is all this stuff
—the unspoken—
Yet when you let it out,
When you write it out,
When you stop suppressing it
So much more of you
Becomes available.

You can write it all in a letter
(That you never send)
To all the people
You wish you had spoken it to.

You can write it
In your journal
And tear up the pages,
Burn ‘em in a fire.

You can write it
And share it
And have it published.

The key thing
Is to speak it,
Write it,
Move it,
So you don’t
Spew it.

~