I Am In The Room

I am in the room now. I am no longer invisible. I am no longer hiding. Why does this frighten so many people? It's not as if I suddenly appeared out of nowhere. You always knew I was there, vague and hazy, like the probability of a person.

Now I'm coming into focus. Now I am becoming real. Now I give my opinions, if asked. Sometimes without being asked. I say what I want. Is that so threatening? Is that so disturbing? Why do you all cringe in fear? Why are you all so angry?

Maybe you were used to my silence, before. It allowed you to think. It felt calmer. You, almost alone with your thoughts, sharing the room with a shadow. The dim glow that I gave off, when I was a ghost, made you feel brighter, more alive. You could speak your opinions without fear of contradiction. It was safe, for you.

And it was safe for me. My silence, my inaction, was safe. I let people tell me what to do, where to go, how to feel. After all, what did I know? I seemed incapable of making any choice for myself. Other people seemed so certain. They had all the answers. They always knew what I should be doing.

You thought my silence meant that I agreed with everything you said. When I nodded, silent and hazy, it pleased you. I was your personal affirmation, your cheerleader. You thought you knew me, but really, you knew my silence. Those few times I managed to accidentally express myself -- it irritated you. The sound of my voice was disconcerting. I'd become a doll. Something you could talk to, be close to, that never talked back, never asked for anything.

My silence made me sick. My hands and feet and nose all tingled with stress. My stomach twisted itself into knots. My intestines stopped working. Some little part of me was screaming, over and over again, "These are not my choices! This is not my life! There is a me inside this doll!"

I thought I had diabetes. I thought I had cancer. "This is what dying feels like," I thought. I went to the hospital and they said I was fine. I was wrong, I wasn't dying. But at the same time, I was right. I was barely alive.

Sometimes kittens and puppies and babies die for no reason at all. They just never start living. Failure To Thrive, they call it. Nutrition doesn't get in. They don't engage the world. Who knew, it could strike in mid-adulthood?

So now, I've changed. I had to change. I'm going to thrive. There was no other option. Live or die. A half-life is no life at all. So now, I'm in the room. The doll has come to life. And it confuses and irritates you. All of you.

Your reaction surprises me. I don't know why, but it does. So many of you said you wanted me to be happy. You said I had to make a life for myself. You said I had to find a philosophy I could believe in, grab hold of, and make mine. "Shit or get off the pot," several of you said, more than once. My physical symptoms alarmed you. You all offered theories and advice. Everyone wanted me to get better.

All the same, my voice, my new reality, the soul I have grown for myself, is irritating everyone.

"I wanted you to make a choice," you all say in chorus. "I wanted you to find a philosophy, but I expected it to be MY philosophy."

Which is so funny. Because that was the problem all along. Don't you get it? All I had was your philosophy, fed to me like poisoned pabulum. And I ate it, one spoonful at a time, swallowing down the poison, like horrible tasting medicine that made me sick.

I'm here now. You're angry and frightened. You want things to go back to the way they once were. You miss the pleasant silence. The room was so big when you were the only person in it.

We're not going back. That's not going to happen. I won't let it happen. Your choices are to accept me being here, in the room, or leave the room. There's the door.

It might seem selfish to you. But that's just it -- I've been selfless for so very long. Blank. Absent. Missing from my own life. I'm here now, and I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure it stays that way.

I am in the room, now. I do hope you will stay in the room with me.