Spiders

Today I am tired. Tired of listening to people speak and tired of bureaucratic niceties.

I’m trying to listen more to the little voice living inside of me. She and I have been working on our relationship in recent months and it seems to be improving. Listening to her has been like an intense session of couples counseling, except there is no mediator to soften the blows and it never ends. She tells me about the moments that I have failed her and I acknowledge her statements as truth.

If I would have listened to her, my life would be different. It would be a more authentic reflection of myself. Today, when I look at it, it is a rippling image reflected in water. It looks a bit like me but it is not me and if I throw a stone in it the image can be destroyed completely.

Sitting at my desk during an evening meeting she chimed in. She asked me to give her a much-needed break. She begged me to stop smiling and nodding in acknowledgment. Just for a few moments she wanted, no needed, this break. It was vital that she have a reprieve from the false reality I had constructed.

I ignored her.

She is not like the people who offer mouth fulls of words during my meetings. She does not dominate the conversation, forcing the group to take listening roles. She is soft but always bold and never fails to ask for what she needs.

I have come to see that she lives most truthfully when creating. She feeds on listening to authentic stories. She is energized by new pieces of art and solid boundaries.

She loves the word no and to reject statements of abuse without a nervous laugh.

So, why don’t I offer her these things? I keep these actions from her because it is easy. It is easy to blend into the fray, to say yes, and to validate offhanded comments with nervous laughter.

She is a little voice that is both extremely delicate and powerful enough to change my world. She lives in the softest most unprotected part of my soul, waiting for me to offer safe harbor and a megaphone.

Her worst enemies are not the people offering jumbled comments on my meetings, but me. I am the biggest threat to her soft exoskeleton. The more I press, the more she is crushed under my weight.

She shrinks and folds in on herself like the spider I smashed in the shower this morning. After I have my way with her she is unidentifiable, just like the spider.

I should spare her and I should’ve spared the spider. I should have done what wasn’t easy, got a jar and piece of paper and freed it into the outside world. But instead, I crushed it and wiped away the evidence of it ever having existed with a wad of toilet paper.

For my little voice, I must do what’s not easy because she is mine and I am hers. There is no bundle of toilet paper large enough to erase her from me.

I must put her in the safety of a glass jar and transfer her out into the world. I must remove the paper and invite her to be free. She will crawl out, at first cautious, and then will be pleased by the wild beautiful world surrounding her.