silent stone, the red queen, and me.

Mare Barrow is red not silver. This means that she is average, not a god and no one to be thought twice about. She doubts herself, until one day she realizes she is something more. She realizes that although she bleeds red, she is something entirely different. She has a power inside of her. But even a person with an ability can end up in a situation that renders you silent.

I feel like Mare Borrow with manacles of silent stone. I think thats why I love this series so much, because I relate so beautifully to the main character and her ups and downs and the pain she feels when she can't feel. I don't want to be shackled by silence any longer. I want to stand outside and feel the power of my ability. I want to feel the inspiration flood back, I want to feel the beautiful build up in my chest. I want to remember what it feels like to craft words into beautiful strings of sentences. I want to feel again. But I can't do that without being honest to myself regarding the silence that has surrounded me. Unlike Mare, who yes put herself where she was, Maven did not toss manacles on my hands. No one silenced me, but me. I did this. I allowed the things happening to me take away the power in my fingertips. I put the pen down, turned my computer off, and surrendered to it.
I surrendered to a silence of my own making.

I need to break the silence, I need out of these shackles. 
Manacles of silent stone are no more for Mare Barrow, and they are no more for me.

I have been at war with my own brain for two years now. And the result is a very insecure person. Yep, thats me. I am insecure to the core, unable to believe that I am any good at anything. Which the rational part of me knows is far from true. But in the wee hours of the night when I felt the most vulnerable, it was negative self talk that kept me safe. Well at least I thought it was keeping me safe, when in reality it was safely securing the shackles around my wrists. I've always known that a positive relationship with yourself is key to being successful in anything. To feeling fulfilled and appreciated. If you believe in you, you create an aura that allows others to believe in you too. Obviously there are humans out there that are like me, too wrapped up in the negative to realize all he/she is capable of, but I am actively trying to change that in myself. 

I started distancing myself from my relationship a little after new years. Not because I don't/didn't love him, but because it was becoming so painstakingly obvious that I no longer loved myself. So, I started to take more time for me. That was foreign to me at the time and I hated it. I was filled with anxiousness and racing thoughts. I got stuck in brain spirals thinking of all I'd let slip past me, time alone became something that was almost just as damaging than what came before. But my therapist pointed something out the other day, you cannot begin to heal without a little pain. I prevailed and started learning to do other things that didn't revolve around watching Grey's Anatomy in my underwear with the dog. (Not that doing that wasn't pretty awesome.) I started taking my time to take the dog to my parents and visiting with them. I made an active choice to leave the apartment, which I will say was harder than I anticipated. Slowly I began to remember how important time to myself was. But I was still avoiding what I was feeling and just kept filling the spaces with everything but the one thing I wanted most.

I wanted to write, but it felt like I'd forgotten how. 

I'd sit at the computer and stare at an empty screen and instead of igniting me, it would flood me with these terrible feelings of being a failure. I was overwhelmed by my inability to do something I'd relied on for so many years before. I always wrote myself through things, but like I said, there was nothing but all encompassing silence. I went to therapy a lot during that time, spent the whole session crying because I thought it would never come back. That I had unintentionally killed my creative. That the writer in me was gone and I was going to learn how to do life without her. I hated it, but I didn't know how to fix it. I didn't know how to get her back.

Little did I realize, I was the one that put her in a cage. I silenced her because I was scared of what she had to say. In many ways I was both Mare and Maven. Silencing that part of me was easier than dealing with things, but after a while I couldn't bear the silence anymore.  It was suffocating me, crushing me. It was an elephant on my chest every day. It got to the point where I stopped carrying my laptop, and I stopped carrying a notebook, because it just made me sad. It added to the already dark cloud above my head. 

By silencing her, I also sabotaged my relationship. I stopped telling him how I was, and it was nothing but "I'm fine" or "I'm tired." It was never "I feel overwhelmed" or "I feel unimportant." Through silence stopped trying to build my relationship and let it crumble. I truly believed he would never understand me, and he was too different.  But silence also kept me from telling him some of the things he was doing, hurt me. He didn't know what his actions were doing to me, because I never said a word. He didn't know that I felt insecure, that I felt like I came last, that I felt sad and unimportant. We were fantastic in his mind, because I played the part. I didn't know how to tell myself what I was feeling, let alone someone else.

Hindsight is always seen in 20/20, and there is nothing that I can do to change the way I have spent the last two years. But I do know that I can unshackle my wrists, break the silent stone, and start healing. I can start rebuilding the relationship with myself, and set clear unbreakable foundations to adhere by from here on out. I will not allow the world to swallow me whole, I will not allow what has happened or what happens to me in the future resort me to silence. 

I will let it lift me up. I will use the power I've known to be words to sail me through the treacherous storm of life's ups and downs. I know now that saying I'm fine is no way to heal, it is no way to face what I am feeling head on. I have learned that avoidance not only affects myself, but everyone around me. It puts gaping holes in foundations.

As I prepare for a big move, I take everything I'm feeling in stride. I am learning not to push it away. I am learning to tell myself that no matter how insignificant it feels, whatever it is matters because it is a part of me. I am learning to be honest with the people around me regarding how they've made me feel, good or bad. This is important, and I never want to know what silence feels like again.

Mare was in a silent stone prison, but even she broke free.