Episode 2: The Night I Didn't Put Into Words

That night,
I feel like I could have put it into words if I had wanted to.
In my head,
fairly well-formed sentences were floating around, and
I even had a few candidates for
phrasing to convey it to the other person.

But,
just before I could say them out loud,
I suddenly stopped.
"Is this something I should say now?"
When I asked myself that,
deep in my chest,
a tiny bit of hesitation remained.
It wasn't that the words were wrong.

If anything,
I think they were in the "correct" category.
Even so,
for me that night,
they were a little too rigid.
A silence flowed.
If you called it awkwardness,
it might have looked that way.

However,
within that silence,
my inner self was surprisingly calm.
Even without forcing the words out,
it didn't feel like anything was breaking.
Rather,
it felt closer to being protected.
Looking back on it now,
I don't think choosing not to use words that night
was an escape,
or giving up.
"Not yet,"
was all I had decided.

Words have
a timing.
If they are too early,
not only do they fail to reach the other person,
but they also
lose their place within myself.
That night,
the words didn't go out, but
they didn't disappear either.
Rather,
remaining inside,
while changing shape slightly,
they quietly stayed there.
A night where I didn't put things into words
is not a night that gave birth to nothing.

It was just that,
without putting them out,
inside,
time was flowing properly.
In this series,
I want to leave behind
nights like that, too.
Time that wasn't spoken of.
Choices that weren't put into words.
Because those things existed,
I feel that even now,
the words remain
"alive."

#UnspokenWords
#BeforeBecomingWords
#TimeOfSilence
#TheNightIDidntPutIntoWords
#RecordOfIntrospection
#ThinkingByWriting
#QuietChoice
#WordsAtLifeSize