Quiet

What I realized about my life right now is how quiet it is.

And not just because my roomie and her two Chihuahuas are out of town for the holidays. Actually, she and I have such crazy, busy schedules, we’re rarely home together at the same time, which is probably why we get along so well.

No, it’s that I’ve noticed the white noise that seemed to constantly occupy my life is gone. There always seemed to be a million voices talking to me at once and sometimes it was hard to think straight.

Sometimes that voice was my ex, throwing question after question at me, such innocuous things as what’s for dinner and what’d you do today to a zillion other such innocuous things. But they always seemed to come in bunches of about 200 and I’d just finish answering one and there was another there, waiting for its own answer. Half the time, no matter what answer I gave, it didn’t seem to be the right one so I had to provide yet another answer and then another answer until I came close to what was expected. I realize now that a lot of that was my own doing and my own desire to be/do/act as I thought he wanted me to but it doesn’t change the fact that it felt like a ton of questions all the time. It actually got to the point in the last few years that I would finally say to him, “Too many questions!” to get him to stop.

Then there were the demons in my own head that didn’t want to shut up. Long after he and I would be done with something, the mind committee would convene and rehash and rerun play-by-plays in my head, showing me what I should have said/done, what I could have said/done, what I should say/do the next time. Then there were the anticipated planning meetings for the next day and what the mind committee was going to do with that information.

Then there was the Ebert & Roeper team that ran a constant running commentary on how I was fairing that day, thumbs up or thumbs down. A lot of thumbs down, it felt like, in the last few years.

Put all that together, it made an awful, ugly noise in my head continuously. It was hard to think, it was hard to feel, it was hard to say anything over that sound. And it just got louder and louder as the years went by.

Even the first few months on my own, those voices and that committee and that critical team kept up the noise level. The only thing that was missing was his voice, feeding them the material to keep living on. Again, I’m not saying it was his fault or that he is a bad person. His voice was just added in with all the others and lingered for months, even after he wasn’t around.

It’s just been in the last month, when I’m finally having some professional downtime, that I’ve noticed how quiet things are. The white noise has become an almost inaudible hum, still there in the background, but I can tune it out now and turn it up when I have time reflect and focus and let the noise go to full volume. The committee, too, has chosen to take periodic sabbaticals, occasionally returning as they did last night to hold a very long, very unproductive debate about one on-going issue in my life that is out of my hands to resolve presently. But considering that is the first night of an all night long useless debate, I think I can learn to live with that.

As for Ebert and Roeper, they’re becoming more of a thumbs-up kind of pair now, acknowledging the positives and the pluses of things instead of finding fault with the direction and production of my life.

Part of this quiet is due to the work I’m doing with my therapist. I never thought I would need a therapist as I always thought I was a well-adjusted, self-aware, enlightened kind of person. But she is helping me illuminate a few of the dark corners, explore why I get into destructive relationships, both romantic and platonic, and find ways of recognizing that at the beginning instead of 16 years later. Therapy is not something I’m going to need to do my whole life but right now, an objective voice is helpful in cutting through the white noise.

Part of this quiet is due to the active changes I have made in my life. I have lost a lot of friends along the way in the past few months, some obviously and publicly, some quietly and on the sidelines, slipping out in the midst of the chaos, never to return. And while that makes me very sad, it also makes me realize that those are probably the relationships I don’t need at this time. Housecleaning applies externally as well as internally, I guess.

And a great part of the quiet is owed to my new, usual group of friends, people I never thought I would share this much of my life with, people I’ve known for years or for only months, people who I have grown to care for so much sometimes it makes me cry. These are the people that let me let the noise escape in their presence so it doesn’t haunt me and keep me awake at night.

And the rest of the quiet is due to me. I’m learning to be okay with the quiet. I have always been afraid of it. Now I realize it serves a purpose. Without the quiet, there is pain, anger, black pits of despair and chaos. With the quiet, I can deal with the pain and process it and put it away, I can acknowledge the anger and dispel it, I can shed some light on the black pits and drain them.

And with this long, tumultuous, noisy, chaotic year coming to an end, I’m looking forward to finding new quiet and new peace in 2006, and learning how to embrace that even more.