I am sure we all know the feeling. The one where you are writing a text message or strongly worded email. You get half way through, or maybe you even finish it and once the adrenaline rush of telling this person your truth has passed, all you can do is sit there, catch your breath, and promptly begin to backspace furiously.
I found myself sitting in front of my laptop doing that a lot last night, and I got to thinking. Do we really think so little of ourselves that, in addition to not wanting to take up space in this world and kind of just blend in to the crowd, we also happen to degrade the worth of our own unique life experience and what could happen if we actually spoke up about it?
Whether it be you finally telling the boy that you really see this relationship going somewhere, or maybe you are a guy who wants to slow things down a tad because you are not comfortable with the pace. Maybe your boss has dismissed your opinion one to many times and you’d like to express your serious concerns in this.
I can’t count the amount of times I have sat before a keyboard furiously typing my words, unapologetically expressing myself and feeling empowered by it. Then stopping.
I do not believe that this is a question of gender, as many people might believe it is, everyone does it. Perhaps it’s a trend “everyone is bottling up their feelings, I should too,” or perhaps, “Crippling self doubt is the new yellow, everyone should have at least two shades.”
But even though it’s in fashion, no one wants to outwardly display their yellow bomber jacket, because that is just too out-there. Yellow gets you noticed, and once you start backspacing that strong hue starts to fade.
I think what we don’t realise is that deleting the words doesn’t suddenly delete the emotions. It’s the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality that has become acceptable. Effectively, you are taking yourself, tying them to a chair, making them pour their heart out and then duct taping their mouth shut once they are looking up at you with tears in their eyes. Then you leave them in a concrete room with a solid metal door, and expect them to be able to go on as if nothing happened. We do this over and over again. Each time chipping away at our voices and self worth. I think wearing the bright yellow bomber jacket might just be the lesser of two evils.
Or better yet, maybe we should hit that send button and see what happens.
And another thing 