The boxes are unpacked and the mirror is finally hanging on the wall. The closet is organized according to season, and the library is alphabetized according to genre.
Two months after moving into my new place, everything is once again just so.
So why has the relative calm been driving me so crazy?
When there’s nothing left to do, all that’s left is this deafening silence.
I try to drown it out with loud music, with laughing friends or with mind-numbing episodes of Girlicious (who am I kidding – I love that show!), but even above all the noise, the silence is still there, a constant ringing in my ears.
For the first time, I am truly alone. There’s no girlfriend living in the upstairs apartment to giggle with, and no boyfriend waiting to cuddle with me on the couch.
It’s me, myself and I, and I’ve never been more aware of it.
Sometimes, I turn off and tune out all the distractions and sit and listen to the silence, and I am amazed by it. It brings me such peace and such angst – at the same time, in the same moment.
I find peace in knowing that each moment is my own. I find peace in being far away from everyone I know. This isn’t Thornhill, where I’m sure to run into someone familiar wherever I go. There’s a certain peace about being anonymous and blending into a downtown crowd, where everyone else is anonymous, too.
In those moments, I am in love with the silence.
But silence can also be a nagging bitch sometimes.
It’s a constant reminder of everything that has changed in the past year. At this time last year, I was a typical twentysomething – madly in love, working like mad, and mad at life for not having more hours in the day.
My boyfriend and I were living downtown together, going to work together, enjoying silent moments together. Now, these experiences are only my own, and the silence makes me sad about it.
I’m sure that for a lot of people who have gone through a major change, whether it be the death of a loved one, a breakup, a different job or a new city – anything that has forced a new life out of an old one – it’s not the loneliness that makes them dread the silence. It’s the memories.
Memories allow you to keep living out the past, but silence forces you to deal with the future.
Listening to the silence and not filling it up with distractions has been the first step for me in dealing with this new future of mine. It’s been hard and sad, but there are moments, like I said earlier, when I have found the peace that I’ve been looking for.
I often wonder whether it wouldn’t be easier just to keep filling that silence with distractions until the silence became meaningless once again. I’m sure it would be, but I’m much more interested in making peace with it, rather than spending the next few years of my life fighting it.
I have found nothing more peaceful this winter than walking around in snowstorms. It’s Mother Nature’s way of telling me that life can kick our butt, but somehow we always manage to get through it.
I have also found peace by just sitting outside on a sunny day and watching people walk by.
Being anonymous in a bustling city reminds me that life keeps moving and we are part of that, whether we feel like we are or not.
Because no matter how loud the silence is at home, the quiet noise of life is always louder once you step outside, into it.
