A Closed Mouth Starved

On fear, failure and unspoken inner lives

Photo by Piron Guillaume on Unsplash

To the 92 people who graciously provide my words a home in their busy inboxes - thank you. Every so often – very often in fact – I question why I do this at all. On different occasions, this questioning, when measured against the many competing things I could be doing with my fleeting time and energy, has led me to stop altogether.

My most recent hiatus from the pen came around the birth of my second son. Another human being spawned under my duty of care; carrying my name and to many, an uncanny copy of my face. Yet, it is only in passing moments that I can drink in the wonder that is this life, and my heart pauses to swell.

More commonly I live, as many do, in a perpetual state of reaction.

Writing can feel selfish when so much of life, outside of my head, emits a dwindling sense of safety. A shakiness that society, and myself in kind, considers a duty to insulate our families from. I don’t need to rehash the various crises engulfing us. With two children, one full income and some health complexities for good measure, to say things are stretched is an understatement. Understating happens to be something I’m good at.

The plain truth is that I’m scared.

I’m scared of being a failure and ever since becoming a father the stakes of being one seem that much higher.

What gets me most is what fear itself can transform into with the alchemy of time at its aid: resentment. And what resentment might mould me into when fully assimilated in my body and coursing through its veins? An intolerably lonely lump of flesh; rigid and decaying; defying appearance by its movement but of little life left.

I place my face to the floor five times a day in prayer and still wonder if there are enough prayers in the world to quell a fate like that.

I fear the subtlety of it; it’s strengthening in the winter months. It’s stubborn perseverance despite the affirming perspectives of the sages and prophets and the wise ones before us. It rears its head in bold black and white, draining the world of its colour and the mind of its imagination. 

One of the ways fear shows up is compulsive over-thinking.

Some time back I parked the car a little far from the curb in front of our house. The incessant thinking that followed kept sleep at bay and compelled me to leave my bed at 3am, grab the keys off the shelf, and in the dead of the night painstakingly attempt to re-park. All this whilst concerned the angelic humming of the reversing car would wake up my wife or neighbours and confirm my absolute lunacy.

It’s the most mundane thing that triggers the inner critic. He asserts how woefully unprepared I am for this endeavour of fatherhood and that I’ll soon be exposed. He digs up evidence from my past and presents his case like an overzealous lawyer. It’s the same voice that provokes the dystopic vision of an old piece. Mostly, I keep the internal monologue, as with other workings of my inner life, inside. Deeply felt but rarely spoken – a neutral expression and pursed lips to mask its heavy workload or an on going stream of media consumption to drown out its chatter.

I’m learning now the compound effect of a closed mouth: a hunger beyond recognition; a languishing soul of unmet needs.

This, Dear Reader, is who I fear to be.

So back to the question of why I write. My wife convinced me that when I go too long without writing I’m less pleasant to be around. Spaced out, irritable, lacking enthusiasm. I imagine it’s to do with presence. Whether I’ve retreated into myself and given free rein to the critic’s tirade or whether the best part of me — the one she fell in love with — is there.

In writing, I engage the tyrant face on; size him up and see his true form. Under scrutiny, he shrinks like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain — his power an overblown projection. Even so, his echo still finds a way to stifle a truer voice.

A voice that I started honing as a 13 year old writing rhymes, to the first blog piece I published in 2017, this has been my medium of discovery, unpacking and sense making. It’s cathartic. It’s where I’m most honest. And if I can manage it, it’s where I craft something of beauty that you might find beautiful too.