Silence

I’ve been having a hard time sitting with the silence the last couple weeks. I tend to fill that space with anything imaginable, from calling a friend to bingeing a TV show. I don’t really engage with the silence, but the silence has been screaming at me lately.

The silence forces me to engage with myself and my body in a way that I typically ignore on the day-to-day, in a way that I can avoid when I’m going through my weekly routine.

The silence feels very relevant today. . . Right now. It feels like an adequate reflection of what this “in-between” day means in the spiritual world, in my spiritual world. 

In past years, Good Friday has given me space to grieve and reset. I’ve been doing some grieving these last few weeks, but today’s silence and waiting feels more significant than previous years.

I am not quite finished or released and yet not fully alive and free. I am not as deep in the trenches of despair and really not entirely able to rejoice. The analogies are endless, but the foundation of tension is strong.

And I’m exhausted from holding that tension for so long. So, the silence comes with hard truths but also relief because it gives me the freedom to just be. To just sit. To just feel. I can attune to the tension in my body, or I can form words and concepts with my mouth and hands. I can breathe through the tension and release its tears, or I can suppress the pain and close my eyes. 

The tears come in the form of my tight throat and furrowed brow. I can lean in or pull away, but both or neither are okay. 

The pain has been living just beneath the surface of my soul for so long, desperate to be heard, to be seen, to be felt. All this time, I think I’ve been desperate for the same, not realizing that I can do those things for myself. I can hear, see, and feel for myself, when I’ve been searching for someone or something outside me to just understand. But the silence is overwhelming because the feelings are never-ending. Even now, I am prone to disengage from the silence and distract. Which is okay too. My feelings need a break sometimes. My body needs a break, and frankly deserves it after all the work its done even in just writing this. 

Be kind to your bodies. Engage the grief and the disengagement and the presence and the suppression. It’s all okay because it is your process. Your process and your feelings are valid. Hold space for yourself. Even if the world won’t do it with you.