by Tyler Dianne Platt.

I thought I had settled it. I thought I had put those pent up feelings to rest like finally swatting a fly that has been circling my head for 17 years, but it all came rushing back, harder and faster than I expected. It wrapped around my brain, poked at my emotions, toyed with my anger. “Get mad,” it said, “you know you want to.”

Everyone knows those kids in the supermarket who think persuading their parents into getting the super size pack of Scooby Doo gummies includes producing a sound rivaling that of a fire truck. I was never one of those kids. I was always good and quiet sitting in my little seat in the basket, so I never really had to grow out of it. I never had to stop screaming because I never started. I got older and started being loud for no reason except that I was a kid and that’s what we do. Then I started being shushed by parents, teachers, coaches, librarians and now I don’t have to shush because I have a reason to be loud.

The phone call I got after my last column started the rushing. After an hour, it became a dull roar in my head. It went from words to noise. I stopped listening to what my father and everyone he had ranted to about what I wrote said. Noise from every direction. Lies, he called them, my words.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and I had hit the jackpot. What he called lies, I called a key to the lock on the rest of my life. I had singlehandedly released myself from their noise.

If I had listened to the people who shushed me, I never would’ve said anything and I never would’ve been heard. The ruckus it started was invigorating. I felt like Max declaring the wild rumpus to begin. I didn’t write it to poke the bear, I wrote it because it needed to be written, settled, for me.

I thought the writing was the settlement, but it was the beginning. Not allowing myself to be shushed was the settlement. Not settling for silence finished the noise.