Making Myself Heard

Yesterday evening I went to a friends house for supper. Actually, the same friend with the unrequited love issues, which I am realizing I know only one dimension of the story there, but that's for another post. He made chili with potatoes in it and people gathered and it was good. We ended up talking about a medieval supper one of us had been to and one thing led to another and pretty soon we were all eating our chili with our fingers and shouting 'Aaaayyee!' like Vikings or kings from the Middle Ages. I had a lot of fun, and realized that I haven't hung out with my non-roommate friends for far too long.

The night before that I sung in front of people for the first time since I was six, and the first time ever on purpose (that I can remember...although I've been told I was a pretty performative little kid, so who knows). I sounded so quiet in my own ears that I was sure no one could hear me over the piano, but I couldn't figure out a way to make the sound louder - my body couldn't push the sound out any more so I decided that the song would just suck this time and I'd work towards a better job next year sort of a thing. Well, not only could people hear me and discern the words to the song, they liked it! That was eye opening and it gave me so much confidence. I've always been told I have a nice voice and now I think I'll start to believe it. And I'll have to learn that my volume is going to have to be measured by how it feels in my body, not how it sounds in my ears.

This week my dad spent two days with me. The fact that he went out of his way to come and spend more time than he scheduled here just because I wanted him to is a big deal. It did a lot to repair our relationship, which wasn't by any means collapsing into chaos, but did have some important holes in it. One of those holes is starting to heal over now, because he spent time here and we had a very important talk. He heard me, really heard me and accepted what I had to say.

For some reason, being heard feels like a new and amazing experience, and it's happened a lot this week, in many hither-to unconnected aspects of my life.

Or at least, I thought they were unconnected. I guess there really is no such thing as coincidence.