Could you tell me a time you found your voice?

I feel it sharp and rising in my oesophagus. The physical sensation of my voice catching in my throat as I fight to hold back tears:

“Go on, I’m listening” he says exasperated, just about managing not to roll his eyes. And yet, even though I have so much to say the words do not come. They sit in the pit of my throat like bile and to swallow them down or attempt to say them out loud is painful in equal measure.

Some years later at my old workplace we’re sitting around on bean bags in a relaxed meeting discussing our goals for the future. We’re asked if anyone wants to share. My manager hasn’t even looked at me but says:

“Lucy I can tell you’re itching to say something”, I am. I’m fizzing, what we’re discussing has ignited something in me but how does she know? Is it that obvious? I feel the colour rising in my cheeks, hot and flushing my face instantly. I feel the words swimming around in my head before I’ve even opened my mouth. All eyes turn to me. I smile and shake my head. Relief floods over me when she doesn’t press me but as someone else starts speaking, I feel a pang of frustration with myself.

This feeling is so overwhelmingly familiar, probably my earliest memory of it being a six or seven year old child and wanting to ask my mum something:

“A problem shared is a problem halved” she would say, encouraging us to share our worries. So I formed the words in my head, moulded them into tangible, easy to remember chunks. I turned them over on my tongue, mouthing them and giving them life. As I approached my mother, she was busy: stirring a bubbling pot at the stove with her back to me. Or hanging our clothes on the washing line, the sheets floating easily in the warm breeze. Or she was sitting with my brother teaching him to read, her eyes downcast sounding out letters with her lips. Watching this, my own words vanish. I open and close my mouth like a baby bird, the words are stubborn and refuse to follow. They sit at the base of my neck just beneath my clavicles. Slowly they slide further down and dissolve like a Berocca in water. I swallow them down in one big gulp.

Even though this feeling was familiar it wasn’t until a couple of years ago when someone I trusted was able to put it into words for me:

“What I’m hearing is that it’s your voice: you can’t find it”. This stunned me. It was so blatantly obvious and yet, unsurprisingly, I had never found the words to say it.

To this day I still find it difficult to use my voice and yet in my job I have to command a room (or at the moment, a Zoom room) and I’m confident enough in my skills to say that I do that well. In fact, it’s never been more important than now with my classes being online, that I use my voice. In real life I can use my hands but without being able to tactile cue, I am reliant purely on my voice: I instruct and my participants do as I’ve asked. I correct and they adjust themselves. I guide and they follow. Using my voice in this sense is manageable, I’ve honed it.

I am still honing it for everyday use. Communicating my needs and wants is a very different ballgame. It’s personal. I find it difficult. I don’t like taking up too much space or too much of someone’s time. If anyone asks how I am, I’m ready to ask how they are before I’ve finished saying “good, thanks”. If I do find myself deviating away from a generic response, perhaps to a closer friend or family member, I’ll catch myself half way through and wonder if I’m talking too much or boring them. My boyfriend tells me:

“Just talk over people if you’ve got something to say. Let yourself be heard!”, but that notion is barbaric to me. He’s a talker and luckily so, or we could have spent the last four years in silence.

I’m a listener and I like hearing other people’s stories. It’s why even though I loved the idea behind this space and enjoyed reading through the blog posts, it took me a little while to submit my own. But here it is, so thanks for listening.