Read more: The Weight of Things Unsaid

You can feel it: those words that sit like bricks on your breath. They percolate between private worlds: yours, and someone else’s. You soften. You sigh into reality. You erect those walls again in hope that eventually someone – your someone – will knock them down. Maybe you even try to knock them down.

But something… Something stops you. Maybe it’s one-sided effort, or over giving. Maybe it’s wrong timing, or age, or fear. You withdraw. You hesitate. You say everything is fine and methodically bury the feelings so deep that no one can find them.

It doesn’t go away, though – those bricks. They sit, and they build, and they build, until your voice is “blocked” by the weight of all the things left unsaid.

This carries two flavors in my own life.

The first was with my father. Historically, we had a close relationship. My mother once told me – during a grueling hospital visit before my father’s passing – that I was my father’s favorite. That sounds like a flex. Dad, however, showed his favoritism by increasing the pressure on me. The older I became; the more pressure he applied. There was an expectation to work constantly; to earn rest. While other teenagers were out late partying, I was tackling two years of college and working nearly full time in high school.

More pressure. More work. More expectations.

Resentment simmered. When my father fell ill and gave up on the world, it built to a boil. Angry, hot bubbles burst around us. Mom and Katie were caught in the crossfire. But my feelings were, too. They needed room to breathe and express.

Now, it’s important to note that I repeatedly tried to give those feelings room to breathe. However, the more air I got, the more I realized that clarity could only come from a conversation with dad. I tried to facilitate one. And another one. And another one. Each time, dad evaded. I tried various tactics and approaches. Mom tried, too.

Those burst bubbles eventually dried. The intensity of my resentment lost its fervor. By the time dad passed, I’d forgiven him for all the things he couldn’t say.

But I still wanted to hear him say them. To deliver his perspective so that I could understand. So, I could say: “Oh, I see now. I understand.”

Mom and I discussed this at length over the years. She also failed to understood why he was so hard on me. It didn’t make sense, she said. She eventually traced the origins to dad’s own upbringing. Namely, that no one gave a shit about him when he was younger, so he overcompensated by redirecting the attention he never received onto me.

Such is the way of humans. We are reversionary creatures who overcompensate for a perceived shortcoming by doing the extreme opposite. Where love is too freely given, we withhold. Where love is withheld, we chase by over giving. We see the same in election cycles: we oscillate between extremes and miss the middle.

Nevertheless, we persist through our lives burdened by unspoken conversations. Resolution remains elusive.

A similar situation echoed in my romantic world. Three years ago, I stumbled into someone that held such promise. He was exciting, and different, and calming – not my type (other than being emotionally unavailable, apparently). For a while, it felt like a romantic future was building behind the scenes. Then the game changed. Flirty texts were exchanged; confessions were made; feelings evaded; fated separations occurred. We found ourselves meeting again, and pretended nothing had ever happened. Another confession. Another separation. More feigned ignorance.

This pattern continued until, one day, I woke up and said: “What the hell are we doing? I don’t want to do this anymore.”

The weight of things unsaid finally struck a deep chord. Only this time, unlike the issues with my father, I was also complicit in leaving things unsaid. I didn’t bring things up again because I thought I would lose him.. Instead, I became as close lipped as the other person. I thought if I didn’t acknowledge all that was unsaid between us, I could keep him around.

Then it grew deeper.

An egoic enigma.

See, admitting things would mean acknowledging that I was scared to lose him. Which is hilarious because you can’t lose someone you never had. If someone doesn’t choose you; you automatically lose. But our hearts don’t like the feedback that comes with that recognition. So, we step back. We hide. We hesitate. Eventually, common sense barges in with a 100-pound hammer and receipts, and demands you acknowledge the pattern beneath the unsaid words.

So, I did. I recognized the pattern. I stopped feeding it.

That recognition is only one step of the equation, though. Being able to step back, breathe, and recognize the pattern is healing; not liberation. The liberation lies in the conversation about the dynamic.

In the deepest part of me, I know this relationship (I use this loosely) probably doesn’t work. It never has. I don’t need a heart-felt confession with butterflies, rainbows, and pillow-soft promises. I just want honesty of acknowledgement. I deserve the clarity beneath the unsaid, the ever anticipated: “You know what, there has always been something here. Even if we don’t act on it, it’s there.”

That’s where I am currently: ready to acknowledge the dynamic, even if nothing can grow from it. Even if we don’t want anything to grow from it.

That desire of acknowledgement is what ticks beneath the exterior of our lives. Our need for connection comes with strings. Those strings are attached to our egos, our sense of fairness, and our hearts in kind. Unspoken things tug on those strings in disconcerting ways. First, we are led to pattern recognition – then to resolution.

Whatever purpose this piece serves for you, I wish you the clarity you deserve. I hope you have the conversation that makes everything make sense. The distant parent, the one who got away, the friend you used to be close as sisters with – you deserve a resolution. You deserve to know. You deserve truth.

The tricky thing about truth is that it doesn’t always arrive in the form you expect. It sneaks, like a stink bug against the windowpane, until it happens to traipse across your vision. Sometimes it arrives with words; other times it arrives with action. But you cannot miss it once it arrives. The stink bug smell heralds the discovery, and as you air out your house, you realize how tricky clarity can be.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it.

Transparently yours,

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