I’ve spent the last two weeks exploring my new world. No dedicated schedules, no real contact with anyone that I don’t seek myself.
Silence.
The last time I was alone, I was miserable and sought company wherever I could find it.
This time, I embrace the silence.
I’ve tried a few different schedules for my writing and I finally realized that the answer was obvious. The insomnia I’ve been fighting with for a few years is the answer. For now, I’m embracing the insomnia and the night.
I’m living in the dark, and the silence at night is far more complete and absorbing than during the day. In surrounding myself in silence, I’m hearing what lives inside me, and for the first time I can remember, I am at peace with myself.
It was only a few months ago that I shrank from examining myself in this way, because when I looked within I saw a desiccated shell. I quoted Hamlet, “Thou turn’st my eyes into my very soul; and there I see such black and grained spots as will not leave their tinct.”
Now, I find that I’m not broken. Darkness and silence don’t frighten me…my soul doesn’t frighten me, either.
And the light…the light has always been within me. I was just burying it in fear and loathing. I listened to the abuser I lived with, and in time I came to see the world from his twisted viewpoint. The world was an ever-shifting miasma of fear and uncertainty and I believed him when he blamed me for all that happened.
It took years to break the spell, years filled with work and doubt and turmoil, but I’ve broken free and I see myself more honestly than I have in my entire memory. I see my own strength. And my weaknesses as well.
I don’t have to earn the love of another person to know I have value. I can finally see that everyone is just as flawed and damaged as I am, and we all have strengths and weaknesses. Those that hate me, hate me. Those that love me, love me. The hatred doesn’t change my intrinsic value, and the love doesn’t change it either.
Learning to accept silence, soft and gentle, has brought me freedom and peace.
