Actions Speak Louder Than Words

I didn’t pay much attention to people’s words, but I did learn very early on to be aware of what they did. I noticed people said lots of things they didn’t mean. My dad would say “I love you” and then beat the heck out of my mom or I in the next breath. I was sexually abused by someone I loved and trusted. What did I know, though? I was just a kid. This is what adults did when they loved someone. Right?

So many examples flood my head that it really is no wonder that I stopped listening to the words and began observing conduct. Lies seemed to be acceptable, and honesty a dying virtue. Even in the most moral of characters, it seemed some lies were okay.

Three that I think of easily are: white lies - you could lie to protect another’s feelings, or there was the “what they don’t know won’t hurt them” lie, also very convenient when one chose to fudge truth. Lastly, the one I had begun to perfect was exaggeration. For instance, why say you caught a 1-pound flounder when you could say you landed a 20-pound swordfish? The swordfish certainly does make for more of an interesting story, kind of like walking “five miles in a blizzard barefoot," wouldn’t you say?

It was because of these gray areas and the out right black areas that led me to develop my own way of distinguishing the truth. Motivated by my own need to know, it wasn’t long before I noticed another language that was spoken much more loudly than the verbal garbage that littered my air space. It was body language. Once my attention was drawn to this, I realized I didn’t need to rely solely on words but could tell a lot more by a person’s actions and how his or her body was moving when he or she spoke.

In “Tammy’s World” (an inner place I had come to know in my dreams), I was taught by this Voice how to protect myself by feeling the vibrations of words and people. A person gives off many clues about who they really are, the message behind the words they were speaking, and any underlying feelings or thoughts that may not be conveyed in their verbal communications. In these worlds, I would perfect these techniques, and they would become my “radar,” my inner guidance and map.

As my education in this progressed, I found I needed only to pass by a person to accumulate more information on them that I ever wanted or needed. I could tell if they were happy or sad, angry or calm, or any other human emotion one could feel. Taking empathy to another level, I not only became aware of what they were feeling, but sometimes I would unconsciously take on their moods as well. (It would take me a very long time and many mood swings later to partially unlearn this transfer that took place. I like roller coasters but not the emotional ones.)

Being a child who loved to play games, I quickly learned to have fun with this new skill. Every individual I came in contact with was a new specimen to try it out on and not a living soul was exempt. I would ask questions like, “Why are you sad?”, “Who made you angry?”, “Are you happy because you have a new girlfriend, Daddy?”, “Are you tired because you drank too much?”, and other more poignant inquiries that made some people squirm and others relieved to have someone to pour their heart out to.

I would delve into lives and feelings and found I was more correct in my guesses than incorrect. This led to a sensitivity in me, not usually found in other kids my age. It also made me different, and most kids do not want to be different. I was one of those kids.