Silent Nothings

Ambient noise is golden. I know, it doesn’t have the same ring as the whole “Silence is Golden” thing but whenever I’m in a room that is really truly silent (and it does not ever really happen in Atlanta), the silence hurts my ears. I can’t fall asleep at my mom and dad’s house usually because it’s too quiet without traffic noise and their oddly silent ceiling fans. I need something with white noise because the silence actually feels stifling. It’s heavy and I start to feel claustrophobic even though their house is bigger than mine and their nearest neighbor is over an acre away. In perfect silence, the air is thicker and time actually slows down – I am convinced of this.

But, even with ambient noise, silence still makes it hard to breathe sometimes. Mr. Damn has been silent for over two weeks now. Every day he is silent I find it harder to breathe. I’m never really sure if his silences are his way of punishing me when he’s angry or if he’s pondering how he feels or what but the longer he’s silent the more my chest aches as I struggle to continue to pretend life is normal.

I can’t interpret his silence. I know he’s mad but I have no method by which to offer any proof and so the only choices are for him to choose to believe me, to choose not to believe me but get over it, or to choose not to believe me and not get over it. I fear that prolonged silence indicates that he’s not getting over it. And in the silence I cannot defend myself or appeal to his sense of logic. In silence I cannot express my own frustrations. In silence I cannot know that he’s well or tell him that he is still loved despite the silence or quell my own anxiety.

Instead I sit in my purgatory of silence. I wonder where he is. I wonder if he is okay. I wonder if he knows how many times a day I think of him. I wonder if he knows how much this silence is crushing me – keeping me awake at night and making the air too thick to breathe.