As a rule, I’m more comfortable writing letters (or emails or texts) than trying to tell someone what I think face to face, because even when I prepare ahead of time, and write down all of my thoughts, and study the bullet points over and over again, my mind still goes blank when faced with someone else’s plan for the conversation. Part of the problem is that I can see when they don’t understand me (in writing, I don’t find that out until later), but even more than that, I get intimidated by people who radiate confidence, whether that confidence is warranted or not. I’ve never had a talent for certainty, even though I have plenty of opinions, and the shining star of someone else’s confidence tends to dazzle me into silence.
Even when I’m alone, though, I still struggle to hold onto my own thoughts in the face of so many impatient internal interruptions: But you should have done this already! But you’re taking too long! But why is everyone else so far ahead of you?! I can barely finish one sentence without the “But, but, but” voice butting in. That voice insists that it knows the world better than I do, and knows who I should be in every situation, and it gets louder and louder if I dare to ignore it. The problem is, I created this internal voice myself, in therapy, modeling it on my long-term therapist’s voice. I had automatically internalized my father’s deep baritone telling me that I was stupid and selfish and the cause of all evil, so when I started therapy I needed a strong voice to help fight it off, and Mom’s gentle voice, encouraging me to say more, to sing more, to dance more, wasn’t loud enough to shout him down. I was relieved to be able to mimic my therapist’s confidence, in herself and in me, to keep my father at bay. But, somewhere along the way, the inner voice that was supposed to be protecting me started to cause harm. It never turned mean or abusive, but it started to get impatient with me, insisting that I should be able to do more than I could, and demanding that I march to a more predictable rhythm than my natural sway. Each time I thought that I’d found my footing on the skinny balance beam of “I know what I’m talking about,” that internal voice would break in and tell me that I was wrong and I’d fall to the floor in a jumble of arms and legs. It took me way too long to realize that this was happening, and even longer to believe that I could do something to change it.
I haven’t fixed it all yet, of course. I just know that the next task is to replace that voice with something more my own, even though, most days, trying to ignore the critical voice makes me feel like I’m standing in the middle of a thunderstorm and trying to ignore the rain. My own voice is still pretty easily drowned out, but I’m hoping that, at this point, I’ve slayed enough of my dragons that I no longer need a big, booming voice to fight my battles for me. And maybe, just maybe, I can give my own voice the chance to grow into whatever it was meant to be from the beginning.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
rachelmankowitz 