Hearing Voices   

People who hear voices are not exactly the ones you want to hang around with; they are, to put it simply, crazy and in need of serious drugs.  At the risk of being labeled  a crazy woman, I have to admit, I’ve been hearing voices most of my life.   I remember my mother telling us to not go out barefoot to play because we would cut our foot open and bleed to death; I took my shoes off because the socks were making me hot and for once, threw caution to the wind and boom!  I stepped on a piece of wire and cut my foot.  There was no doubt in my mind that I was a goner, Mama was right, I cut my foot open and now I was going to die.  I wanted to run for help, call an ambulance have someone administer first aid to try to save my doomed self, but I knew the powers at work there in my back yard in Mereaux, Louisiana almost fifty years ago and I just fell on a stump and prepared to die.  Of course I didn’t, I bled a lot but once I put my foot into the mud and stated high tailing it to my house to try to find salvation, the mud stopped the bleeding and by the time I go to my mother, who, of course, threw these words into my face “Ya see!  I told you!” I was convinced that I might live.  There was a restaurant at the front of the road we lived on and we were forbidden to go in there.  As children it was easy, but when we turned to teenagers, there was something terribly appealing about Mutts Restaurant and Bar—there were games to play and of course French fries and the infamous Mutt Burger, which til this day has never given up the contents of the ‘meat’ it used to make those burgers.  I heeded the warning though, Mama said “do not go into that restaurant or you will be in trouble, and if you do, I will know.”  I stayed clear of it, my entire childhood I didn’t know what the inside of that place looked like because I was a goody goody and too afraid of what would happen to me if mama found out and she would find out.  I remember my brothers coming home who were two and four years younger than me, and she was giving them the third degree.  “I know you were in that restaurant,” she’d say and they stood their ground denying it.  “I can smell it on ya!”  And she could, if they admitted to it, they got punished; if they didn’t, they caught a beating and then they got punished.  I remember walking home with my brothers and staying a distance behind them because I did not want that smell to get on me.

 When we were older, my youngest sister and I were living in Virginia and my mother came for a visit and Maria and I were laughing at my mother’s words and warnings—If you go on a date with a boy by yourself you’ll get pregnant, if you eat pickles after six o’clock you’ll get a belly ache, if you kill a cricket in the house you’ll have bad luck, if you go swimming in the lake you’ll drown and the crabs will eat your flesh—we were laughing at her and wondering how we could have been so goofy to live under the fear of her statements for too long.  It was summer in Virginia and Maria had just had her first daughter, Brittany.  We wanted to take Brittany for a walk on the beach before dark, so we were packing our stuff and headed out the door with the baby when Mama came running after us with a blanket, two sweaters and another warning.  “You can’t take that baby out without a blanket, are you crazy?”  Maria and I looked at each other and thought ‘here we go again’.  But mama threw the sweaters at us and told us to put them on and to wrap the baby up.  She said “you know the air changes after four o’clock, you’ll come home with a cold and get pneumonia.”  We took the sweaters and the blanket, but as soon as we got into the car they all wound up on the floor as we laughed our way to the beach.  But the next day baby Brittany was sick with congestion and Maria was starting to cough, she called me after she’d talked to the doctor’s office and was fearing pneumonia.  We both repented right then and there for laughing at our mother.

 Do I believe the air changes after four o’clock and that by not wearing a sweater Maria and her child got sick?  No, I don’t, but I do believe in the power of words—words spoken over us as children and on through life.  Sometimes they lose their affect and we grow out of them, but there are so many instances when the words spoken over us land in our hearts and we have so much trouble getting out of them.  My sixth grade teacher said I was an idiot and I’d never write a good letter much less a story and I believed him, heart- broken for three years I hid my writing, was afraid to be laughed at and told how bad it was.  But in the ninth grade, another teacher saw my creative writing assignment as genius and encouraged me to do more.  By the time I was in the tenth grade, I was practically writing all of the articles in the Beauregard Bugle and had won poetry contests.   When I was a junior in high school one of my articles got the attention of a reporter on the local news and I was invited to the television station for a tour and told I had a future in journalism.  I got two scholarships when I graduated because of my writing; it’s a good thing I didn’t listen to Mr. Mean in the sixth grade, huh?  But I continued to listen to the nay sayings and the voices in my head, I let circumstances and fears keep me from taking it all of the way and instead of believing in myself and the talent I knew I had, I listened to the people who told me ‘you should be happy being a wife and mother” or “why do you always have your head in the clouds?”  or “You better learn how to be happy with what you have.  Who do you think you are any way?”  I let their words keep me from going on, I let their opinions cloud my vision, I let their doubt cripple me.  I went through life believing the voices, and not believing in myself.  I look back now and see all of the opportunities I had not just in writing but in music as well and wonder what in the world was wrong with me?  Why didn’t I just throw caution to the wind and just go for it?   I was afraid, afraid of what the voices were saying, afraid they were right and I would just fail.   So instead of doing something I did nothing and got nowhere. 

I see so many people with so much talent and I see them feeling wasted and going nowhere.  They say it’s not in what you can do it’s in who you know.  But looking back on so many years of that mentality now I have a different opinion.  I say it is about who you know—about who you know yourself to be.  If you have something, a gift a talent and you want to aspire to use it to do great things, I say go for it.  And by great things I do not mean lassoing the fashion industry with your designs and becoming the next Christian Dior. I believe there is greatness in following through with it—going beyond the drawing board and putting it on the back of somebody even if it’s just you.  If you’re a musician, it is so easy to make CDs today by setting up your own recording studio, if you have always wanted to be a recording artist—go for it, make it happen for yourself!  Whatever your dream, whatever your goals in life stop the halt—you know the one I’m talking about, the one that comes right after you get that big idea and start pushing to make it happen and then—whack!  Something stops you and you come to a frozen halt because you think maybe you’re not good enough?  What if they don’t like you?  What if you get rejected?  And whatever other voices have been put into your head to make you doubt yourself.  If you’re a writer pull out your writings, if you’re a musician, play something, sing something, if you are an artist look on the wall at all of your work—whatever your gift is—look at it and ask yourself—is it fair to keep this gift all to myself?  Plant a few seeds, give some things away and I promise you, once people see what you have they will want to see more. 

If you have the talent, use it.  If you have the opportunity, go for it.  If you seize the day, you will not regret the chance that follows—whatever it is, however it floats or falls on the floor you will know in your heart and mind that you did what you needed to do and there will be no regret.  And with every step, with every motion forward you will change the negative voice into a positive force.  Believe in yourself.