ode to taboo

a love letter to everything we pretend we don't think about

give me the topics that make people shift in their seats. the ones that clear a room at Thanksgiving dinner or get you a very concerned look from your aunt who just wanted to talk about the stuffing in the turkey.

give me the conversation nobody started because nobody wanted to be the one who started it. the one that’s been sitting in the corner of every dinner party in a coat, waiting, for someone to finally say okay but what do we actually think about this.

i want to talk about death. not the greeting card version, but the real one. the one that comes for everyone, the one nobody has figured out and everybody pretends they have and the mystery of what comes after that keeps people up at night and builds entire civilizations and cannot be resolved and i find that fascinating.

i want to talk about money. not the watered-down version either. how much you make, how much debt you have, how the number in your account has more to do with where you were born than how hard you worked and how uncomfortable that makes everyone who worked very hard.

give me politics said straight forwardly, religion said honestly, sex discussed with actual curiosity rather than performance in either direction.

give me the marital issues that people post about anonymously at 2am because they cannot say it to anyone with a face.

give me the dark psychology on why people do the things they do that we classify as monstrous and then consume in documentary form because we cannot look away and maybe that says something and maybe that’s worth examining.

i want the bodily functions named without flinching. i want the health problems described without euphemism. i want the gossip dissected not for cruelty but for what it reveals about who we are when we think we’re just talking about someone else.

i want the age gaps examined, the gender dynamics unpacked, the foreign policy discussed by people who do not usually get to discuss foreign policy because it affects them first and is talked about by them last.

everything that makes people nervous is a place where something real is hiding. every topic we have agreed not to discuss in polite company is a topic we have agreed to leave unexamined, and unexamined things do not stay quiet. they come out sideways. in the things we vote for without thinking. in the things we do to each other without language for why. in the private thoughts we assume are uniquely shameful because we have never said them out loud and heard someone else say me too.

the taboo is not the problem. the silence around it is.

the conversation is not dangerous. the absence of it is.

the questions that make people uncomfortable are almost always the questions most worth asking because comfort is not the same as truth and politeness is not the same as peace and a room full of people carefully not saying the thing is not a room full of people who have resolved it.

so i am going to keep dissecting uncomfortable things. not to be provocative. not to perform edginess.

but because i genuinely believe that the thing you are afraid to say out loud deserves a room to exist in.

and i am building one.

pull up a chair. we have a lot to talk about.