The hardest thing to do is stay silent and do nothing when every fiber of your being wants to react. Stories take on a life of their own in a small community and once they gain momentum, the truth simply doesn’t matter. Sharing ‘your side of the story’ is futile because social media gives ignorant people a platform for their toxicity.
We live in a world where facts don’t matter. They matter to me, but to a growing majority? No. When it comes to politics, I don’t give a fuck. I brandish facts like a scalpel, slicing away at falsehoods with surgical precision. But when it’s personal? When people fuck with something that cuts to the core of who I am? Facts add oxygen to a fire that’ll eventually smolder and die. It’s not worth correcting people who hold onto their version of reality with all the righteous indignation they can muster.
So, silence it is. There is power and dignity in silence.
Silence requires patience and strategy. Be on guard, observe, wait, never lose control when silence is the strongest card in the deck. The desire to set people straight is strong, a growing tumor of white hot festering rage that wants to explode. The inability to take control of the narrative…soul crushing at times.
But this too shall pass.
I continue to take deep cleansing breaths, absorbing the abundance of loving support provided by my friends and family. The kind of love some will never have. One might feel an inkling of pity for the lonely lives of others…sorry for all the misdirected outrage and self-loathing they likely experience whenever they cross paths with a mirror. Numbing their pain, losing a grip on reality, hoping against hope to give their lives meaning. It’s sad in a way.
For now, I write with restraint and wait for the smoke to clear.
When it does, clothed in the tattered remnants of their spite and ignorance, I’ll do what I do best. Hold my head up high, rip off the noxious scraps of their decaying insecurities and continue living my life with clarity, purpose and love in my heart. As for forgiveness? That’s a whole other ballgame. I may forgive, but I’ll never forget.
In the meantime, I surrender to the silence.