Silence of the Birds

Dear Diary. It's Tuesday. Writing in ink so let's pretend I didn't just write 'dear diary'. Sounds dumb. Well, I guess people are supposed to write that part. Oh, whatever- Dear Diary... No. It's just dumb. As if it can hear me! Come on Dana. Behave and bend to the status quo. Yeah, like I always do. Whatever.

Okay one more time:

Good Morning and Dear Diary,

I have been meaning to do this journal thing. For the last ten years. Since I was thirteen. I went out and bought this little light green book today just so I could store my thoughts inside it, like it's some kind of me file, a secrets file, a storage facility for my spent soul, the part that exists as a memory mostly. That sounds almost scary. My mother always said that if you write your secrets down you risk them being discovered by someone someday. So why would I even bother.

I think I know why. Probably because I'm tired of holding these things in. Like the really mouthy cop who pulled me over last year and laughed at me when I assured his nosy ass that I am a responsible adult who doesn't just 'overlook' speed limit signs like he said I did. Screw him. I don't know why but that moment has stuck with me in a really bad and bitter way. It was just ten minutes of my life and yet his yapping old face in my memory still annoys the hell out of me. I can't even look at cops the same way now. Or most of them at least. Funny how that works. I used to trust them. But now I feel they're all on his side. I have no evidence of that but I still feel that way anyway.

And there was that lady, like three years ago, who hid under a mile of stiff perfume with those ten pointy long fingernails she had on like they were to defend herself with in the elevator at the state office building. She eyed me, clutching her gaudy bag. Some big, expensive freaking pink and yellow regurgitation of a designer's tipsy whims or something. Lady I wouldn't steal as much as a mascara crumb from your squinting face! Much less your ugly bag full of burdens. Why would I want those for myself. She glanced at me, frowning, then looked down and took an obvious side step into her corner. I mean what! I was wearing my grey hoodie with yoga pants. Did she really think I looked like a robber? I mean my hair was messy from the wind outside. But sometimes I gotta walk through the real world, lady, to get from point A to point B, unlike her. I know she drove some car that cost half as much as her house. She just looked the type, the type who could manage to gain the trust of people I have trusted then whisper reasons to them for them to shun me. And actually convince them. Maybe that's why I saw her as such a big threat to me at the time. Somehow that pales in light of that cop's insensitivity. He really messed my head up somehow.

Maybe the problem is me. I was raised to be way too polite. So a lot of people have run over me without my objection. At least without my open objection. For me objections are synonymous with secrets. Angry secrets cause I just get so mad at all those damned over expressive people out there, people who don't have to say a word because their nasty looks they give me speak volumes about why I'm not welcome in their presence. Sometimes I want to see them just turn on each other and like engage in some mass battle of loud expression until the last one standing falls into my arms and asks me why I've been so quiet the whole time. I'd probably laugh since it would be such a good question. I'd laugh at the irony of how one of the last people on earth- at least in my dark and internal Armageddon- finally asked me a good question. Asked it right when I was about to go off and wander the world all alone in the deep chill of the night, in a world where I had been once again abandoned. Abandoned. All those assholes who canceled me in the past. Permanently. I am dead to them over some tiny remark. They do not forgive.

That's why you don't speak. That's why you don't say such things out loud! People will abandon me in a second flat if they don't like what I say. They always have.

So I have all these friends now, people I can talk all day long to but never really open up to. Acquaintances. Fakquaintences. Fakes. Smiling faces and emoji grinners with eyes out of my sight as they stare at my words in search of flaws in me, searching for the first reason to turn on me then use me and my supposed 'great offense' to acquire for themselves yet more attention, by complaining to others like, "Dana did this, Dana isn't worthy to be our friend..." Makes them all feel so inflated. They do it to each other all the time. Behind each other's backs. Ninety percent of them are all secretly canceled in each other's eyes yet they pretend to still be friends. They only spare me because I'm silent. As far as I know.

Silence is the only way to freedom from complete rejection. I must never tell them what I really think, and I totally know that. And so help me god I never will!

So Mama, why would I write my feelings down for someone to find someday? I don't know, maybe I'm naive, as you say I am. Maybe I'm a passive aggressive 'snowflake'. Or maybe! Maybe I want someone to find my feelings in a book! Read them. Know how I feel! You hear me Mama! Why do I have to be so deeply polite down to every crevasse in the grain of my being! To the point that even my pain- the pain inside me that you deny I can have- has to be daintily written with a fine silver pen on velvety paper in delicate words! No! No mama! I hurt. I hurt inside and because of my own fear I don't want to ever be completely alone or left out and I know it's all just my own mental crap! I know it! But it's there, Mama. You can't class-wash it away. Privilege is only skin deep, it can't touch the soul. You can pretend your soul came packaged and flawless from the manufacturer with a lifetime guarantee on its happiness but I know you feel more human than you'll ever tell anyone. Suit yourself. I can't fake it like you can.

I wanna write this crap down- all my pain, my skepticism, my shock and repulsion- so it gets out of ME! Maybe she'll never understand that. She'd think I was wasting a perfectly pretty little book to scribble rude comments in. She's just too polite, like some politeness monster, a polite disaster! It's like her politeness overflowed into me and I got it ingrained inside of me against my will. How did I end up like this. It's frustrating! Quiet. Afraid. Misunderstood. All polite, never daring to break the ice upon my tongue. The loud shatter would just be too rude I guess. That's how thick the ice is- it would shatter like glass. So I'm stuck acting like her on the outside, but it's on the outside only.

So if anyone ever finds this book just know one thing- that I might be scared of what you think outwardly but inwardly I'm proud of what I feel. And the more I write on this one page alone the more proud I feel. Surprisingly. Because these are MY feelings! And maybe you- whoever would dare peek into my thoughts on this page- are just too submissive to ADMIT that YOU have your own nutty, crazy, insane feelings too!

But that was rude. You're not crazy. Neither am I. I think we're all just frustrated and hurt. My mind makes me laugh, being all sane one minute while my heart is screaming at a phantom. Not laughing out of humor- just perplexed at my own insanity. But nobody knows that about me. Nobody but you, Dear Diary.

Okay. I might like this diary. It's like a paper person that listens. I wish it was a living person who I could totally and absolutely trust to tell anything to. But I guess no such being exists. Only paper people are to be trusted. Even my devices can't always keep a secret. Sometimes I wonder about the whole point in people even being able to talk at all.

Talking is one of the things that is supposed to make humans oh so great, so much greater than the animals. But why. It seems there is enough fighting in the world without speaking. I guess supposedly when God made people, or so they claim- rude again- God gave them language like it was some great thing. Then they pissed him off and he destroyed their ability to communicate by making them babble in all different languages. Some people use that story to justify why they think human language is like gold, or precious water, really, like communicating every last conceivable thought is so utterly important in this world. Well I guess it is, as long as the communicating is with yourself. Only.

Communicating with myself is obviously more useful than communicating with a bunch of grouchy, risky characters out there in the world. Myself will never yell at me. They will. Myself will never tell my Dear Diary to go to hell or anything like that. They would.

I can trust this little book, my cool little paper person. I mean, my feelings actually seem to make more sense now that I wrote them down blatantly, not tailored to appease any crowds. I feel like I'm somebody. Not just that girl. I make sense to ME and that's all that really counts. I mean I hope that someone does find my diary someday, that they read it and go, 'Oh, you mean there's a real live person in there, behind those beady brown eyes? There's a perfectly alert, silently responsive human being in that skinny little body and somewhere under those pink locks of hair that don't seem to match her quiet soul.' Yeah. Then they'll know Dana is a living breathing equal. An EQUAL.

So Mama sorry about what you think but if I can't say it out loud then I'll let my diary say it for me. But I WILL say it. It WILL be said, like that one time, just never out loud again. And I never meant to make you cry that night, by the way. Honestly I didn't even know you could cry. You're always so sane and logical with me. I felt horrible about that. But only my diary is privy to that little secret. You are not. Nothing personal. You think I hate you but I don't. I really love you. But since you think too much emotion in a verbal exchange is impolite, I don't tell you with words. I don't know how to tell you. So we'll just go on talking about the hair salons and the politics of aid to the hungry and all your boring Jazz band performers' lives and wives and newborn babies born on Independence Day and New Year's Eve. We'll keep a polite distance, shall we.

You know, if we could talk to each other maybe I wouldn't really need this diary. As much. But if I die before you then you heard it here in these pages left behind, that I love you Mama. I have always looked up to you despite my opinions about you. I know that doesn't make sense. Our whole relationship doesn't make sense. This silence of the birds doesn't make sense. We chatter and tweet with everybody in the world a hundred miles an hour, but only about trivial things. Never about deeper things. Are you really in love with Dad? Did you mean to spill wine on Mrs. Lewis's new rug? Do you ever have weird dreams? Are you afraid to die when you're very old?

I don't want you to die, Mama. I hope you and your religion are right about that afterlife your church believes in. I love you Mama. I don't hate you. I just say that sometimes.

That's all for now. -D

It's still Tuesday morning. Had to grab the laundry from downstairs. Just wanted to add that in so someday I can remember me being here. I don't know why- maybe I'll want to one day.

I just read what I wrote. Wow, I'm really blunt when I talk to my diary. And I can get away with the truth in these pages. AND NO ONE CAN STOP ME. That's a power trip in a way. Sort of. Like I OWN MY TRUTH. Me and my little paper person, my doll without a face, this book. WE share MY soul. Just trying not to feel alone by saying that, I guess.

Don't have much else to say right now. Except that my handwriting sucks- but I don't care. If I use a pencil- I know me- I'll erase a hole into these pages trying to correct and perfect. I just wanna see my raw self- me and my diary. We can see me together. Since nobody else can. Not my parents. Not the cops. Just my paper doll. It's more like a paper bird whose chatter whispers my words and wings wrap its front and back covers. Some birds are silent. This one at least whispers. It's the little boxy ghost of me that nobody knows is really there. It's the other part of me.

I wonder how many other people are like me, somebody who nobody else can see. People who even I can't see. People known in full only to their diaries. People who are technically disembodied from that other part of themselves but still connected by a thread of ink and a stream of endless subconscious thought. Wow, that was poetic! Well, I don't know about all them but I love being here, personally. It's where my feelings can get naked yet remain shrouded from the sun, from sight. From knowledge. From judgement. This is like my Garden of Eden. Why would I ever bite the apple now- when all it is, is bait for me to go online and see who knows what about whom and possibly lose touch with myself in search of a nosy form of knowledge. The fruit of the tree of knowledge can only separate me from my higher self, my paper person. I've never been more sure of that before now.

Well Dear Diary, I wish you could double as a fortune teller- tell me how this new roommate's gonna work out. Oh my god- roommate. I never thought of that. I wouldn't want HER to find my diary. I'll have to think of a place to hide this. A really safe place. Oh CRAP!

Okay I'm back. I found a spot between the cushions in my chair by my closet. The cushions are attached to the chair but there's a slit in the bottom of the top cushion. But you have to reach between the cushions to find the slit. That stupid metal clothes hanger ripped it just after I moved here- god I was so pissed! Anyway. Yeah. I'll squeeze my diary up into that slit and tuck it behind the foam. No one will ever know it's there. Not even my roommate. I don't think she's the type to go snooping through my things. Really I don't.

She's too prissy to do that. And she hasn't annoyed me yet. Maybe that's because she doesn't really talk much. Sometimes I feel like she's secretly judging me, though. She goes out of her way to pretend not to see me crushing my cerial in the bowl, which is louder than I'd like it to be. She probably wonders why I don't just add milk. I wanted to come out and blurt the reason the other day- which is of course because it makes the cereal taste like cold oatmeal. Which is gross. Even dear old Mom knows that I've always hated milk in my cereal. But I crush it up so I don't scratch my mouth chewing up dry cereal. She pretends to be texting but pauses when I do it. Her head turns away just a tiny bit, it's almost not even noticeable. Her neck tenses. I hope she realizes that this is my place too. So far she's been polite.

I wonder if people ever think I'm secretly judging them. Come to think of it, I think I do actually secretly judge other people at times. I guess it's no big deal if they do it to me. Or maybe it depends on what the verdict is, so to speak. Yeah. It would depend on the verdict.

She's knocking! Okay. Later, Dear Diary. I really love this little book! I was about to give it a name- my little paper bird needs a name. Okay, DD. Short for Dear Diary. Not to be confused with D, that's me. Three Ds make one complete- D-VINE- higher self! Smiles. Oh my god she knocks like a cop! Gees! Calm down in the knuckles would you Holly!

Okay, I have to put this bird in her nest. So goodbye DD. For now. I'll be back in a few. -D