Warning: Adult language

I know it hurts.

I know how it stings and aches to suck at speaking up. Your lips won’t move. Your mouth is frozen shut, paralyzed in place by some unknown poison.

I know how it burns to be quiet on the outside when, on the inside, you’re shouting in screeching tones that could deafen a banshee.

I know how suffering in silence can feel like a lonely, dark prison.

But, there is this one moment that smells softly of hope.

You know this moment.

It hangs in the air, dense and fiery, pounding like a million frantic hummingbirds in your chest.

It’s the moment when being quiet is no longer an option.

Your voice can’t be pushed inside, or put back in place.

Words come, like a hurricane.

Fire comes.

The earth shakes from underneath your feet.

Your skin burns and peels away, revealing shaky, yet oh-so-powerful, tender, raw, unedited vulnerability.

And you finally remember this:

Your words matter.

Your voice matters.

People can hate it or love it, cherish it or wipe their ass with it. If 10 or 10,000,000 souls hear your stories or ideas or thoughts or feelings, your words matter.

If you touch one heart, then you’re wildly f*cking successful.

And yes, that heart can be your own.

Don’t waste this delicious life saying what people want you to say.

Don’t write what’s easy to digest and yummy and popular as pink air-fluffed cotton candy.

Don’t only talk about what’s comfortable and shiny.

Dig deeper.

Cut the poisoned, suppressed, cancerous silence out of you.

Paint your pain into words.

And say what you need to say.

Say the words that you can’t breathe without saying, the sentences that drown in rivers deep inside you, the nagging thoughts that strangle you at 2 a.m. in dark moments of profound, icy-cold loneliness.

Pen the words that pour out of your pounding heart on the subway, when you’re shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of sweaty, exhausted passengers.

Carve out the raw truths that bandage your tender bruises and hold you up.

Speak the words that burn holes in your soul.

Shout the craziest, wildest, most chaotic ideas from dingy rooftop bars and lush, evergreen forests and rocky mountain ledges.

Because these words—the ones you’re afraid to utter cause they might sound f*cking insane—they are the only words that make sense.

They make the world make sense.

If you ever think otherwise, come home to yourself and remember:

Your words matter.

Your voice matters.

You just have to be courageous enough to move your lips.

Take the risk.

Today.

Open your mouth.

And speak.

Being quiet is no longer an option.

And you know what?

It never was.

Not ever.

This world—this crazy, f*cked up, beautiful world—it wants to hear you.

Because your words matter.

Your voice matters.

It always did.

 

Relephant:

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Author: Sarah Harvey

Editor: Travis May

Photo: Flickr