2:11pm May 25, 2014

Have you ever…?

Have you ever found that you couldn’t speak, even though you knew all the words that you wanted to say?

Have you ever found that you had no words, that words had no meaning, that even the existence of words, their possibility, the idea of words, was something that could not enter your mind as the remotest of possibilities?

Have you ever stood there while someone talked, and heard only gibberish? Have you ever stood there while someone talked, and not even known that the gibberish you were hearing was meant to be speech, words, or communication?

Have you ever listened to the music in people’s speech and gotten more understanding of that than you could possibly get out of the words?

Have you ever tried really hard to hang onto the ability to understand words, and still only got 10% of what people were saying? Not because you had problems with auditory processing, but because you had problems with language processing at a much deeper level?

Have you ever tried so hard to make it into words that you got stuck in the realm of language? It felt like exile. It felt like being exiled into the most alien of alien planets, marooned and wondering if I would ever escape. Every word was made of metal heated into a forge to near-melting temperature and then hurled into my brain so I could feel the full extent of the pain.

Have you ever tried hard to make it into words, and got stuck halfway in and halfway out? Have you tried to come up with a word, or understand a word, and only heard a small explosion go off in your head, and then unspeakable pain. And that unspeakable pain every time you reach for a word that never materializes, every time you hear a word that your brain refuses to understand. Explosion after explosion, and nobody notices a thing because it’s all inside your head.