Silencing the Screaming

Everything happens for a reason, right? Well I just spent an hour typing on my cell phone, what was in my opinion, a well thought out post. Only to have it disappear for no apparent reason right off my screen before I published it. So I am choosing to believe that it was because I can do better this time around. (Someday I will get regular internet at home and move into a carefree blog zone. Until that day, I will retype)

Everyone has heard the expression the squeaky wheel gets the grease. There is a line writen by Ani Difranco that goes something like "silence is violence in women and poor people. If more people were screaming then I could relax". In both these cases silence is the enemy. It is what causes people and issues to disappear, become invisible. It tolerates the intolerable. This was my definition of silence most of my life. Even as a child I would talk just to have my existence know. I would scream and through fits to be heard, to be taken care of. Then as a teenager I would talk to fit in, to feel important. I would talk to anyone who might listen, much to the annoyance of some, I am sure. My biggest fear all along, was being unimportant, forgotten, or ignored. Later in life, I had a mentally abusive boyfriend, and I talked about how horrible he was to any audience I could get. Yet, as with so many abused women I would go back to him over and over. Once I was aware enough to realize what was really happening, my screams for help and my yelling to the world about the unjustice that had been done to me by this boy, fell on deft ears. Much like the boy who cried wolf, my call for help seemed largely ignored. Reinforcing to me my unimportance. Soon I turned the screams inward on myself. I yelled at myself for being stupid, or crazy, bad. These" tapes" played at high volume in my head at all times. So I would try to drowned them out. Constantly surrounded myself with people, music, TV, whatever I could to not hear my own thoughts, and I continued talking, about important things, unimportant things, whatever just to fill the air. Then one day I realized that for all those years I was really just talking to the wrong people. Once I got a good therapist and a good doctor, I was heard, and began to heal. It has taken years for me to learn not to fear silence, not to constantly try to fill the blank spots up with "I am here! Hello, listen to me. Hello. Hello. Hello." But now I have a new relationship with silence. I have learned not to bog down the importance of what I have to say by constantly yammering on and on. I have learned the value of time spent alone, in quiet reflection. Now I find I yern for silence, even need it. So much so that I often find myself annoyed when in the presence of someone who can not allow a moment to pass without a comment. I become annoyed, anxious, frustrated without it. And now my life is filled with a young "talker" of my own, two needy pets, and a man who is a nervous talker and has ADD. All of this has added to the value of silence dramatically. I now use silence in the form of meditation to quiet my mind, to turn off the tapes I once worked so hard to tune out. I also enjoy a moment of quiet reflection. Time alone with my thoughs. Time to think things through, organize my ideas. Chuck claims he waits anxiously for me to finish my especially long showers because it seems I often come out of the bathroom with some type of brainstorm about how to make our life or the world better. Don't get me wrong the noise does occasionally sneak back in to my head under the guise of a quiet night. More often though silence allows me to enjoy a moment or idea I may have otherwise missed. This blog came out of one of those long showers. I now hear crickets, birds, and streams, all of which quiets my mind. But the best thing, the most important thing is that now I am heard more often when I need to be. I no longer drowned out the sound of my own voice, and I have not disappeared or become invisible.