The Nail in a Harsh Voice

Strangers frighten me. When people I know speak in a harsh voice, they become strangers to me. When harshness reaches my ears, it feels as though someone is hammering through my skin, flesh, and bone, driving nails into me without mercy. My arteries burst and scatter, blood spurting everywhere in the chaos. My consciousness, my very existence, drowns and drifts away in that torrent. I begin to lose my mind, their hard words barely registering, yet I say nothing—I simply sit still, watching with quiet eyes.

In those moments of sharp pain, I search desperately for a pair of eyes that might offer me some solace, eyes that seem to say: don't be afraid, I am here. This fog will pass. Stay still a little longer. Wait, and the suffering will ease. Numbness gives birth to understanding.

Why does this happen? Do I feel too much? Am I simply oversensitive? Is it because I insist on listening with my whole heart, even to words that don't deserve it? Is it because I worry about things I needn't worry about, and so I suffer more? I am afraid of strangers, and when people I know treat me like a stranger, I am terrified.

As I sink deeper into darkness, losing my footing further and further, my confidence and self-respect slip away one by one. Then, at precisely that moment, someone whispers in my ear: what you think is happening is not happening; what you think you hear, no one is saying; what you think you see does not exist anywhere. Run from these thoughts before it's too late. If you don't run, a monster will come and devour you before you can even understand, a monster that hasn't even been born yet.

And then it laughs—a grotesque, violent laugh. That laughter locks my ears shut! I let it laugh; I don't stop it. This is not regret; this is the attempt to know myself. When fear takes hold, if you want to escape it, you must not turn from the fear itself—you must distance yourself from its source. To know the source of my fear, I search for a way out of it, or I learn to live, bearing the fear.

I let people speak to me in harsh tones. I let those I know become strangers. Sometimes, I even choose to be afraid. This silent dying is what I need to understand people and to understand myself. This silence is not weakness; rather, it means letting them win so that I might truly win.