Sometimes I cannot bring myself to speak, to verbalise what thoughts and feelings are swirling. Silence seems to keep them under control, to keep them in the depths. If I open my mouth, they may escape and I’m not ready for that to happen.
And what the world sees is me with a smile and a greeting. Maybe I falter at the moment of remembering something significant in your life. I can’t quite pull together the relevant memories and conversations that feed my knowledge. And then I feel ashamed that I have let my feelings overtake my interest in you, that you will think I haven’t listened or paid attention to your life and your needs.
All the while I’ll keep floating through the demands of daily ritual, the cooking, laundry, school runs, errands. All the while I am actually convinced that I have a handle on it all, that I have reasoned all the uncomfortable and painful feelings into the right corners of my brain and body. That I have accepted, processed, owned, released.
And only in the truly quiet moments, this half an hour waiting for my children to finish their activities, where I have stopped with unexpected space and grace. Only then do I realise how much I do not want to speak. How much energy it takes some days to be a responsible, thoughtful, loving human and parent, when I am craving blankets and books and silence.
In my teens and twenties there were times when I would sit in the base of a shower and let the water run on hot for an hour, or I’d curl up in the bottom of a wardrobe with the doors closed and just the fabrics, darkness and silence as my embrace.
Now my children, my life, my choices fill me and fulfil me so that I can believe so many of those pains never even existed. They belong to another lifetime, another journey but sometimes in the quiet moments, I never want to speak again.
First published on social media on 3rd April 2023