Finding a home for your voice

“That’s all I want… to have a voice” Journal entry: 14^th November 2018

This post is to those who wish to share their hearts but haven’t found a home for it because they feel too different or too scared. For those who life has told you feel “too much” and you should “just chill out”. There’s nothing wrong with you. 

Alone and lonely- these are the two words that characterize my life. It’s a mix of loving my time alone and feeling lonely when I do want company. Very few people have waded into my heart and consistently known my whole truth; they are all of two people. These two are aware of and know in great detail my journey as a Christian woman trying to shed her ratchet edges. They are aware of the fight within me; the struggle to break away from the past that molded me, into becoming the amazing woman I intuitively know I can be.

That number is low, and it’s not anyone’s fault really. I can actually say it’s mine but to a lesser degree. I learned and made peace with the fact that it’s my personality. If you’re yet to know yours, click here to take a test. It adds clarity to the person you think you are. That’s a suggestion though because I realize many people won’t reach for resources they don’t think they need, myself included.

As Wambaire, remaining sane requires that I take a few days to recharge. On top of that, I am usually aware I am withholding information especially in contexts that don’t feel like a safe space. With just that to go on, it becomes increasingly clear getting to know me is like tilling a rocky field. In this rocky field, add thorns because of the isolation I grew up feeling and experiencing. Behold, you have a woman that only speaks cream and keeps the milk that you’d like to dip your cookie into to herself.

Before you feel cheated, know that it’s changing so hold on to your cookies!

Keeping the milk for me has been predominantly because I didn’t, as a human being, feel valued. That then extended to what I thought I had to offer, including my thoughts and feelings. But that’s change- you don’t go .com if you think you’ve got nothing of value to say! Even before that, blogging has been the one place I can put my thoughts and feelings out since high school because, unless you hack my account, you couldn’t make me take my words back. That rubbed a lot of people the wrong way because they couldn’t understand why they were learning about a part of me on the blog sphere and not in person.

Er, well, perhaps because I am intense and you’re not? If you’ve read this far then you’re more likely to be the type that’s more interested in the human journey than who did what and went where and why they said and did what they did.

So imagine being surrounded by people who, when you go into your intense mode, grow quiet, and watch you talk. After, they do one of two things: change the topic and for the most part gracelessly or give you advice that has almost nothing to do with the purpose of your sharing in the first place. Ah yes, there’s the third type; they compare their life to yours to show you just how much harder they have it.

In short, they manage to dismiss everything you’ve just said. It’s not because they are bad people, it’s just who they are, albeit it being a weakness. It’s the reason why we have a personality tool that says there are 16 different types. Being surrounded by everyone who thinks like you is almost impossible especially if you have a type that makes up less than one percent of the human population.

I guess where I am going with this is, if you’re like me, your inner circle will be super small. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. It will, however, mean learning who to lend your voice to and who to withhold from. Not in a bad way though; not everyone should know about your intimate parts. It’s why in Proverbs 4:23 we are told to guard our hearts because everything we do flows from it. Now imagine what’s flowing out of wrecked hearts!

If you’ve experienced a lot of false starts with friendships and relationships where you reveal too much too soon only for it to fizzle, it means you should be keener and become purposeful about spotting your tribe. There really isn’t another way, you just have to be smarter about the bonds you make.

That will take a while. Until then, there will be times you scroll your phone and come up empty as to whom to call in your moment of distress. In as much as it hurts, I want you to remember this: there’s nothing wrong with you.

From that space, look again. Who do you need to stop opening up to? Who do you need to trust more? Most of all, ask yourself, who accepts my voice in its truest form?

And yes, that process sucks. Something about pain accompanying growth…  But that’s just my experience. What has your journey been like? Let me know in the comments section.

Cheers.