Lately, I’ve been indulging myself in a little exploration of new written mediums. One piece of work I’ve been enjoying greatly is the newsletter Crème de la Crème from the mind of Aminatou Sow, a podcaster, author, and all around media badass whose work I admire greatly. In a recent post, Sow assigned a bit of homework for her readers. She posed a series of reflection prompts known as “The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself” accompanied by a quote from the legendary writer herself. I’ve been journaling on each of the prompts, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to share some of those thoughts here. I’ll be posting those reflections in four parts, in order to really allow myself the space and time to respond to each question thoughtfully.
“Assigned Reading” from Miss Aminatou Sow
“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you…. What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.”
I began to ask each time: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, “disappeared” or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.
Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” ― Audre Lorde
The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself
- What are the words you do not have yet? [Or, “for what do you not have words, yet?”]
- What do you need to say? [List as many things as necessary]
- “What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?” [List as many as necessary today. Then write a new list tomorrow. And the day after.]
- If we have been “socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition”, ask yourself: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” [So, answer this today. And every day.]
My Response to Question #1: What are the words you do not have yet?
First and foremost, I do not yet have the words to formulate forgiveness. I do not have the words to forgive the person who let me down the most, and I’m only beginning to find the words to forgive myself for everything I’ve always felt I was to blame. When it comes to you, I don’t know how to express how deeply you hurt me and how impossible it would be for me to ever feel I could trust you again, while also simultaneously leaving space to let you know that I understand it wasn’t easy. I know that your life was hard, that you’ve endured more than you ever even let on. But I don’t know how to make you see that I get it. I hold your pain with deep compassion, but I won’t excuse the hurt you perpetuated in refusing to address your own. How do you tell someone that? Especially someone so fucking fraught.
How do I say that I’m waiting on something I know will never come? Apology, accountability, improvement. Those are the conditions I unwittingly established in return for my forgiveness, but I couldn’t ever find the words to ask you for that, because I have still never judged you resolute enough to deliver. You do not kick a person while they’re down, and you have always been down. I resent you for that. I despise the way you wallowed in weakness and forced me to forge my own strength. It shouldn’t have been that way.
My therapist often tells me I that I was brave, but that I should not had to have been, and I want to pass that message on, but these are just more words that I don’t own. The more I write this the angrier I feel, and I realize I do not have the language to make sense of that rage anymore. It tried to kill me once, so I buried it underneath all the good in my life, and somewhere in there I think I buried any chance of healing with you. Now I work at it alone, understanding that if I want out, I must make progress on my own. There can be no reconciliation of relationship. There is only me and my liberation, something I gift myself, and no longer a deliverance I seek from you. There is only me, granting your forgiveness for my own sake, and all the words I don’t have because I only ever wanted to spare your feelings.