The Sound of Silence

My daughter has commented on my silence several times lately. "What's the matter with you? You haven't said a word for a long time."

I went out with my new coworkers a few weeks ago, and one of them asked me if I was quiet. No one has ever asked me that before, I told her -- which is true. But it was also true that that night, I was quiet.

There were a lot of things that worried me in my last relationship, but one of the biggest was my boyfriend's silence. He so often retreated to it, and I would wonder where he'd gone, and what was going on with him, and if he was wrong for me because he didn't want to share his inner life even though that's super important to me in a mate.

But lately, with my own silence emerging and causing issues for others, I wonder whether I do the same thing that he did, and if it was easier to fixate on his silence than to notice my own. I don't know.

I'm reevaluating a lot of things about that relationship. My friend asked me if I've been writing, and I told her I hadn't. She asked why. I thought about it, and answered: "I thought I had this great love story to tell. I thought I wanted to tell how worthwhile it is to work through your pain and come back to your body and your heart so you can truly experience love. And now I wonder if it really is a great love story. I wonder if I have truly experienced love.  No, I take that back: I know that I truly experienced loving someone but I'm no longer sure whether I've truly experienced being loved. I read posts like this one, which I found when I was looking to see if I'd used this song before, and it just feels like bullshit.

And that leaves me with not a lot to say, kinda like my friends Paul and Art:

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a streetlamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
No one dare
Disturb the sound of silence

“Fools” said I, “You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said “The words of the prophets
Are written on subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence

I talked to a friend today who said that when things shift, you have to reestablish the ground beneath you. I reckon that's what I'm doing. Quietly...