When Silence Screams

I am a nothing but a pile of quirks and inconsistencies. I am made up of awkward moments and even more awkward texts and I don’t know how on earth I became this way, but I am...

I have a very serious foot paranoia, in that I won’t let people see my feet unless my toes are perfectly pedicured and I fear them not being smooth with perfect cut and painted toenails. As if someone’s true opinion of me is based solely on the perfectly quaffed maroon polish that squarely shapes each toenail. And I hate the taste of tomatoes, yet I insist on cooking with them and putting them in tacos to balance it out. And sometimes I listen to my own recorded poems because my love for slam poetry and the pull for inspiration somehow satisfies me and those poems make the rough days easier, even though I’m the one who wrote them. Finally, I hate silence. I hate it. It’s thickness. The mood it harbors. The way it makes the voices in my head scream. And yet, it’s the most necessary thing on this planet. And I love it…

There have been points in my life where I have asked for solitude, moments where being around other people was too much for my brain to fair and I chose to stay home and let the voices in my head scream. I still do this, quite often. I live alone because I like the reflective air I breathe in my own space. I like to come home and read a book or sit outside and take in the night air and drink hot tea. Sometimes I’ll sit in the spare room watching slam poetry online, taking in the emotions played out. Being by myself has never bothered me. In college, my roommates left for the summer and I had a 3 bedroom house all to myself, something I later came to value. It was hard at first, living in the silence, but I came to enjoy the time to myself and that’s when I feel I truly became myself.

The problem with solitude or silence is that it is mistaken for an aversion to communication, like the world is somehow turned off. But what I’ve come to recognize through myself over the years is that communicating with yourself is often more important than communicating with those around you. Sure, you need to speak with people to maintain relationships, but you will never get there unless you know how to process and give yourself time to appreciate your own needs. You need your own reflective space and time to let your mind catch up with what the world has handed you. You need a moment to grasp the life you’ve been given and figure out what you’re going to do with it. 

When I first became a social worker, I kept myself tucked in my own shell for nearly an entire year. I had a hard time dealing with the emotions those children were giving me and I took things extremely personal. There was one case in particular that shredded and mended my heart throughout that year. I never thought a foul mouthed 6 year old could change my life, and yet he did. He taught me to fight for what I thought was right and to go with my gut. He taught me that everyone deserves second chances and that even the broken people need love. He taught me that things are always worth saving, even when it feels like you have nothing left. That boy will forever be the heart of social work for me. He exhausted me on insane levels and literally put me through hell. Not kidding, he sent me to hell. There were daily phone calls from his caregiver and from the school and I had to run to his rescue more than 50 times that year, but honestly… I’d do it again.

There were days my heart couldn’t take and I sat in silence in my home, worrying over this kid and being afraid that I screwed up. I sat there crying, night after night, afraid that I was failing him; that I was failing all of them. I curled in on myself and turned away from my friends and my family and I sulked and soaked up the silence like a sponge.

Eventually, through my silence, I became reflective. Towards the end of my time with that agency, I realized that worrying over things wasn’t going to change them and I knew deep down in my heart that everything I had done so far was exactly right and that I hadn’t screwed anything up. I used that acknowledgement to fuel my last few months there and took a stand against things I didn’t believe would help. I fought for that kid until my very last day; through every single disagreement, every heartbreak, every stupid policy that ruined things for him, and against staff members who saw nothing in him but his difficult behaviors.

 I fought for him because I knew that he wasn’t his behaviors. And I’m not mine. He wasn’t some bratty kid. He was smart and funny. He was reflecting and loving. And he loved ninja turtles more than anything. Which later fueled me to start buying more ninja turtle stuff of my own, including a lanyard for my keys that I bought to bring him a smile and remind him that I’m on his side. A keychain that I still use today. He was more than the label they had given him and more than a symptom of the things he’s been through.

Somewhere in all of this it brought me to the conclusion that sometimes when we need silence, we’re not being aversive to communication. We’re just communicating with ourselves. I remember my friends worrying over me constantly and calling me to have intervention dinners where they told me I need to find a new job and that I wasn’t handling things right. But tell me, how does one handle heartbreak? How does one pick up the pieces of other people’s messy lives and try to sort it out to make it whole? 

I hate silence when other people leave me in it. It’s awkward and uncomfortable and it’s hard not to fill in words for them. We take a moment when they’re off on their own and we start making up scenarios in our heads of what’s happening and we start filling in words for them, trying to keep the silence from swallowing us whole. It’s hard not to do this, not to dissect every single thing. I’ve been in a few dating scenarios where I wouldn’t text back for several hours or sometimes not even until the next day or two because I had so much going on, and I remember guys literally blowing up my phone. In my mind, I was going to text them back I just forgot about it or I was working and dealing with kids and I didn’t have a moment to dedicate to him. But somewhere on his end, he decided that I hated him and that he wasn’t good enough for me and that I didn’t care. He filled in words for every gap of communication we had. I eventually learned to warn people about my tendency to “go off the grid” so that they wouldn’t jump to conclusions, but it still happens from time to time. I definitely am no innocent to jumping to conclusions. I have had several moments of my own self-doubt and fearing of losing people and it has lead me to create 97 scenarios in my head for what is happening and I, too, start filling in words in the gaps of communication.

It comes down to security and trust. You have to trust your friends to know what they need. Check in on them, let them know you care, but ultimately you have to trust that they’ve got this. I was always really frustrated with my friends when I’d have yet another “You need to quit your job” conversation. They didn’t get it. And they still don’t. My job isn’t easy. Far from it. But its work that I believe in and honestly it fills me up more than it tears me down. I had to tell them to trust that I know myself well enough to survive it. And in dating, you have to be secure enough that things are okay. Silence isn’t always a bad thing. We think that communication must be constantly flowing, and to some extent it definitely needs to be there, but at what cost? If you don’t have the energy or the time to dedicate to it at the moment, is the communication even beneficial?  

I have many friends who have complained about getting the silent treatment from their significant other, myself included. It’s hard not to hear from someone you care about, especially when you’re used to talking to them for a long time. Often times the quieter someone else is, the more I fill in words. Like if I’m on a date and the guy doesn’t talk, I just keep talking. Like a rambling habit to just keep things going. The same goes for if I’m in a fight with a friend. If they don’t respond to me, even if we’re talking in person, I will keep talking. Like I’m trying to somehow fix everything by filling in words for them too. I try to play both sides. And I do this in relationships at times, where I keep trying to get my point across in 40 different ways because their silence lead me to believe they didn’t get it the first time. But they did. They definitely did.

Silence is not an aversion to communication. It’s a need for self-communication. Everyone needs a breather from time to time. Don’t let someone else’s breather make you insecure or lose your trust in them. Trust that people will come to you when they need it most. Be confident that you’re a good friend and that they know you’re there. Don’t worry about what you’re not hearing from them and don’t fill in words for them in the space between your communications. Just breathe. Soak up the silence. Quiet those screams in your head. Tell them to haunt someone else. Be mellow. Be reflective. Let your inner monologue have a voice in a book or a blog. Maybe write a journal. Give yourself some space too. Silence is only deafening if you let it be and being lonely and alone are two different things. Everyone needs to be alone sometimes. It’s how you find out who you are and become independent. 

I love being independent and free to be myself. I don’t know what my life would have been had I dated and gotten married before now, but I definitely wouldn’t have gotten to know myself on this level and I kinda like the girl in my head, even though sometimes she’s an insecure mess. She’s not a bad roommate. Don’t let yours be either.