Mouth

Dear Mouth,

You were nicknamed "Mouth" as a teenager, not as affectionately as one might think.  Your frustration with your parents, their haphazard parenting of your younger siblings, the chronic warfare that had decimated their marriage and divided your family, would boil over sometimes and you would barrage anyone within range with a bitter tongue lashing.  As you settled into adulthood, it was not as often but there were times that you simply could not help yourself and your anger became a slithering, living thing intent on punishing  people for not being as perfect as you thought they should be, for hurting you.

You learned not to be angry, lest that vicious girl appear and take over your lips.  You learned that just burying the anger, smiling sweetly and consciously projecting that you were “fine” worked in your relationships better than becoming the Mouth.  You stopped trying to figure out why you felt angry and focused on pretending to not be angry.  Still, something in you  screams at the inequity of how your failed relationships impacted your life, your finances, your childrens’  lives and your peace of mind and it lives coiled up and tense just beneath the surface.  The wrath of Kelly, still now scaring you with its power.

There are times that being angry serves, but more often than not it is a wall that everyone who tries to love you hits hard and painfully.  It is said that anger covers hurt, wraps up your pain with a protective venomous layer so that the fragile psyche can appear strong.  It is time, then, to carefully shed that skin and let the scared child, the frustrated adolescent, the care taking teenager, the abandoned young mother feel mad.  Feel furious, cheated, taken advantage of, disappointed.  They are after all just feelings.  They will quietly slither away if confronted.  You no longer have to ignore the warning rattle, the tensing up of this angry person inside of you ready to strike.  You can use your mouth to communicate with respect, you can stand up for yourself, you can be firm but kind.  You no longer have to use it to stand up for your siblings, your children, your friends.  They can handle their own lives now, and they also have a mouth to do so.