What I Can't Say

There are things I would normally blog to get out of my head, put here to sort the pieces of, look at once I was done, revisit, resort, and then let go, but for various reasons, I feel constrained in doing so currently.  I'm in one of those moods where I want to lighten up my load, throw away everything that is bothering me, every reminder of it, shed it all, and leave.

Why am in that mood so often, though?  Why is the way I deal with things not "fight and fix" but "toss and go"? When the actions of others who matter to me cause me pain or irritate me, my most common reaction is not to say something, not even to let them know.  It's just to get away from them.  And stay away.  I doubt it's even noticed by those I flee, to be honest, but the reaction has always been a part of me for as long as I can remember.  Leave the conversation, leave the room, leave the house, leave it all....  No warning, no nasty note.  It's not for attention.  It's not drama.  I just have to go.

I can wrap the solitude around me like a comforting blanket, get out and get in the car, drive for a day, be in a place where I am unknown, let the abstract voices of others wash across me, engage in trivialities with strangers, wear an anonymous mask where I don't have to be...anything, really, that I usually am, just some woman, and there is something soothing about it.  It doesn't call on those places that are injured, that are bruised.  It doesn't require anything from me.

There is no chance of an argument, a stupid conversation that goes wrong and is misunderstood, a silence that begins and doesn't end.

Shouldn't I dig into myself and say, "No.  This matters, and even if it hurts, it's time to say it"?  If it matters, shouldn't I try?  Or is it better to just let whatever it is go, maintain whatever sort of status quo there is, take my stripes as I'm sure I'm giving some, too, along the way in my own way, and go on?  Which is best - the saying because it matters and it's intolerable or the silence because it matters and it's intolerable?

I have no answer to this paradox.  It pins me down like a specimen in a Cabinet of Curiosities, maybe titled the Girl With the Mask for all the things I hide myself behind.  Maybe someday either I will figure out how to step out or somebody will come looking.