It must have been something like 25 years ago, my brother told me: ”you know after you finish saying something you kind of move your lips silently, mouthing the same phrase again?”
This wasn’t something I had ever thought of or done consciously, I had no idea this was happening. Looking back now it’s easy to assume that it was simply me being a very self-conscious, careful and, well… neurotic kid. Before saying anything I went through it quietly in my mind time and time again, somehow preparing and maybe evaluating it before actually speaking it aloud. Then afterwards my lips, maybe stuck in the repetition, just repeated the same movements again.
I don’t remember exactly how my brother brought this up, I don’t think it was said in a teasing way but more of an interested question. ”Why the hell do you do that?”
After having it brought to my attention I of course tried to suppress my ”shadow talking” though more often than not I think I was unsuccessful and I realized mid lip-movement that I was doing it again.
If it ever stopped? I don’t know, I honestly don’t know. My insecurity and cautiousness subsided some in my twenties. I picked up smoking after moving to Tokyo - just… something to do with my hands? Maybe a veil of smoke hiding my lips moving silently? No no, nothing so calculated but maybe just an unplanned positive. It helped.
Nowadays nearing 40 years old I think I still do that quiet repetition and evaluation in my head before speaking, but now more and more often instead of being said and then quietly lipped again things just remain unsaid. If my 20s opened me up, my 30s must have closed me down again.
Why this is?
Was it covid? Shutting down our social interactions, no meeting friends at the bar or talking shit over lunch at work. Caught behind a piece of glass.
Or was it becoming a parent? The focus shift from self to kids? A tiredness not experienced before and an ambivalence of being lost at sea and somehow, at the same time, fully certain.
Maybe, but not really.
I suppose the closing down started before all that, before pandemic and parenthood - a summer’s day in 2014 when I was 27 years old and the sky had the most peculiar shade.
We couldn’t get a hold of my brother, he didn’t answer his phone so me and my dad jumped on our bikes and went to his apartment. The air smelled like it would rain, and I think we both knew it before we got there. Me and dad didn’t say anything during the bike ride, but I am certain the same thought went round and round in our heads.
We stood in the stairway outside his door and tried calling again. We heard the muffled sound of the phone calling through the door but no one picked it up. The rest you understand, right? An unlocked door, a phone charging in the kitchen, my brother dead.
That person that saw me with such focus, the only one to notice my shadow-talk - no longer here to teach me about myself. Him pointing out my peculiar behavior made me try to change, to improve? Who would I have grown into with him still here?
Words left unsaid but now quietly repeated, lips moving with no sound.
I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.