Last week I talked about being alone in the house.  I never realized how loud the quiet is.  I’ve never felt the weight of someone’s absence in that way.  I’ve never noticed the weight of the person’s presence in their absence either.  So often I wanted time alone—like entirely alone.  I wanted to breathe without worrying about someone interrupting me.  I wanted to relish in the things I wanted to do.  I wanted to be able to sleep how I wanted to and to not have to wake up 3 hours before everyone in order to work on the things I enjoy.  I couldn’t get through a day without a million thoughts interrupting me let alone the people who actually interrupted as well.  Or a plan going awry because someone was at my house after a 10 hour day and 2 hours of commuting.  My frustration built and built and that’s when it became resentment.  When I couldn’t even get a thought out. When I started locking my door just so I could shower.  When I sat in the car a few extra minutes after I got home.  When I noticed that my husband didn’t even want to talk to me and would spend his time on Tik Tok or with our friends instead of me—like he could have a full conversation and support them but he didn’t have the time for me—always brushing things off.

So I needed space desperately just to separate my thoughts because I could feel everything crashing down and no one wanted to address it—they didn’t want it to fall but didn’t want to deal with it, content to let me hold it all up.  I needed space to hear the thoughts and differentiate what was mine and what wasn’t.  I needed time to disconnect from people and time to stop taking them for granted and to stop allowing myself to be taken for granted.  But when we finally get that silence, it hits like a ton of bricks.  The silence means something else when those people suddenly leave.  I’ve often heard that silence can be deafening.  I’ve experienced that myself, waiting for people to tell me what I needed to hear only to get an answer that I decidedly didn’t want.  I’ve felt the weight infiltrate the silence where something was conveyed with no words at all, the weight of waiting.  Sometimes we don’t know what the people around us contribute to our lives until they are gone.  Sometimes we don’t know how they hinder us until they are gone.  Sometimes we don’t see what we’ve done until the noise is gone.  Sometimes we don’t see what we’ve been trying to really drown out until we get rid of the extra noise.  We have nothing to face but ourselves when it comes to the silence—and that can be a tricky thing to navigate.      

The silence shows us who we are.  It’s the clearest mirror we can hope for, certainly the most honest as long as we can distinguish the truth.  In that time we may learn that the things that drive us nuts about those closest to us come from a good place.  Or that they don’t know what they’ve done because they don’t understand it the way you do.  Or that they really are doing their best.  We may also see that they are fully aware of what they’ve done and that it’s up to us to decide what we will tolerate.  We may see that it’s us who has created the monster.  Or we see the monster we’ve become.  And the version of us that needs to heal and be released.  I’ve run the gamut of all of that in my time alone.  Truth be told, I could probably use even more.  It’s made me more aware of what people need and what they are going through.  It’s made my own needs clearer.  What I thought I wanted isn’t exactly what I needed.  I’ve learned that when I hoped I could have silence what I really hoped for was the ability to cope.  I needed to know who I was and to understand what I am capable of.  I couldn’t do that codependently anymore.  I’ve learned that I need to stick with my boundaries and it is going to mean pissing some people off.  It means that there are parts of me from 23 years ago that no longer exist and that I need to let them go.  It also means that I need to make space for who I am now and that may mean letting go of what used to give me comfort, people included.  There is no anger in it, just an acceptance of fact.  Silence doesn’t have to be scary if we welcome it.  Welcome what comes with it.  In silence we may just hear exactly what we need.