They will break you.
They will define you.
And they will haunt you.
I’ve learned quite a bit about the power of words in the past two years (aka my high school years thus far). For example, I have discovered the priceless, consequential value they bring to every situation.
Words have the power to transform an ordinary meeting of two people into a series of phone conversations and coffee dates.
However, words also have the power to turn that meeting sour–whether by a bumbling outpour of insincere statements or simply by withholding those statements altogether.
I am haunted by regrets, most of which are due to the unsaid.
The most you can do for someone in this world is give them a little bit, or perhaps even a lot, of love. And, truly, isn’t that what we all want, deep down in the smallest corners of our souls?
But you cannot love someone to the fullest without daring to speak the things you’re afraid to say.
I could give a number of instances in which I said something or didn’t say anything (more of the latter), and I have found the occasions which haunt me most of all are the times I wanted so desperately to speak my mind but didn’t.
It literally robs me of breath sometimes when I think back on those days, those moments when I so fiercely wanted to say hello to that cute guy I’d been pining over for months but became so entrapped by my own fear that I said nothing and lost that chance forever.
I would go home, and I would hit myself in the forehead and scream how in the world could you be so ridiculously speechless when that opportunity practically hit you in the face???
I’d like to think that I understand myself–that I know my limits and my strengths adequately. But there are just certain situations where I honestly do not know where my head was at the time.
I am so sick of giving fear the power to close me up and suck me into the void of my own irrational anxiety. I am so sick of missing out on gorgeous, God-given chances due to my own sickening self-doubt. I am so sick of feeling powerless.
But the thing is, I DO have power. I have power over my words. I have a filter, a brain, and a heart overflowing with passions and desires and the unsaid. I have power.
And you do, too.
I have wasted too many chances to count. But I am determined to waste as few chances as I can with the time I have left on this earth. I want to reminisce on my life and be utterly amazed at the things I actually did all those years ago, despite myself.
Please, friends, stand with me as we conquer the decaying wasteland of our unsaids. Don’t allow fear and doubt to compromise your own power. No regrets. Be courageous, and free yourself.
Words are in my not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it.
albus dumbledore
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