Saying Everything

A friend once said to me, "You say everything." She meant it as a joke. I've been walking around with these words for years, chewing them over, thinking on them. She was right. I do say everything. I rationalized that since I spent the first half of my life keeping secrets, not saying anything, not daring an opinion, not challenging authority, that I could certainly spend the rest of my life putting it all out there, learning from my mistakes as I go. It is a reckless way to live, this. To put your heart and your words out there, with the idea that the experience and the feedback will add to your knowledge and inform your choices. You have to trust that those closest to you understand the whys and the wherefores because you've laid it all out on the table. It must be reactionary, my need to shout from the rooftops, "See me. Hear me." as though I need some external proof for my existence. But saying everything, all these words cast, feels burdensome. I regret none, but still I carry them, feel heavy with them like Atlas felt the weight of the world. Maybe after so many years of finding and exercising my voice, I'm ready again for silence, contemplation. Tonight I stargaze, a way to switch gears, find my center.

From Weight: The myth of Atlas and Hercules by Jeanette Winterson

Potassium, like uranium and radium, is a long-lived radioactive nuclear waste of the supernova bang that accounts for you. Your first parent was a star.