I fear silence. Silence means emptiness and aloneness. I can’t stand the echo of nothingness that surrounds me. Noise has filled my life forever. It is the only consistent thing in my life. My head always kept busy with finding solutions to conflict. My heart always full of feeling of some kind to untangle. Finding peace in silence is an alien concept, one I struggle to come to terms with.
It’s rare to find myself alone at home, but on Friday the house was empty except for me and my menagerie. The rain poured from the sky drowning out what little sunlight was afforded on this already dark November day. My little dogs and cats languished in a selection of comfortable beds in front of the fire. They stirred occasionally to stretch and returned back to their peaceful contentment immediately.
I envied their ability to just be. They had no thought of the pile of laundry to be done, the dirty floors to be swept. Endless thoughts didn’t enter their heads at lightening speed to confuse their lives endlessly. Finding peace in silence wasn’t an issue for them. I wondered if their little heads were filled with thoughts, perhaps of their life before me. Did they remember their mother and siblings? Do they grieve as we do for family and old companions?
Overwhelmed by the endless to-do lists, I found myself stuck and unable to really do anything at all. I switched off the tv that nobody was paying attention to, placed my phone on silent, leaving it out of reach in the kitchen. I found myself pulling a cosy blanket from the cupboard and set about getting comfy on the floor beside my little friends. Ruby, my constant companion, made her way over to me to snuggle under my chin. We lay there, in the quiet of our home, nothing but the sound of the rain outside falling on the concrete and only the crackling of the fire broke the complete silence.
Guilt and if I’m honest, some shame, engulfed me at partaking in such an indulgent moment on a Friday morning. Doing nothing but so much to do. Yet in that moment, a feeling of gratitude took over. There was such utter bliss in this insignificant and non astonishing moment that I may remember forever. It became, at that moment, the most important thing I had to do that day. One by one I appreciated each little creature that had now found their own snuggle spot against my blanketed body, and suddenly found peace in silence.
