Silence

This is what my life sounds like -

It sounded like this when everyone was out on the streets yelling Happy New Year.

It sounded like this a month later when I was battling ferocious hives, possibly wrought upon by the COVID booster shot I needed to get.

It sounded like this when I turned 30 and baked a cake for myself in the kitchen.

It sounded like this when I completed my degree.

It sounded like this when I got promoted.

It sounded like this when the holidays came around in the USA and in India.

It sounded like this when my relationships ended.

It sounded like this when I got the news of my dear mother passing away.

It sounded like this when I came back from India after performing her last rites.

It sounded like this when I sat with myself, ferociously trying to figure out who I am.

Silent.

Our generation was the first of the numb ones, the first line of defence against the internet that took life as we knew it, down.

Our heads are already in disarray and our bodies don't know how to separate trauma without applying a twisted sense of rationale to it till it isn't trauma anymore but something that was bound to happen anyway- the head would win everytime.

You see, someone had offered a sagely piece of advice - to be more in solitude with myself- do not listen to music in the gym, not in the car, do not play the TV in the background, no distractions during any activity, STOP!

When this advice is taken seriously and applied to the life of someone in disarray,

life gets more painful than not.

For the first time in my life, I am hyper aware of myself, my skin, my teeth, my greying temples and even how long my nails grew in a week.

And this is scary because this silence is self inflicted and forced into reality which is usually filled with music and TV.

And this is also novel to the head and the heart and it feels like I am having to teach myself how to exist and function and build up the endurance to get through the day without interference.

I do not know the outcome of this trajectory I am on.

But this silence in solitude is deafening.

Deafening Silence

As always,

the silence is deafening.

I remembered something in the midst of that deafness today-

something that I had preached but not practiced-

that the Universe will teach us the same lessons in different ways

over and over until we learn what is required for us to understand

from those lessons and finally make sense of it all.

Unfortunately, these lessons do not come with subtitles,

do not come with announcements, do not come with headings

or an Amber alert; the Universe just keeps throwing them at us

and it is up to us to lean in and make sense of what is happening

or try to notice if there is a pattern.

I realized and learnt a few months ago

that the Universe had been teaching me lessons

to love myself and look inward for a long time in a variety of ways.

I learnt and realized the Universe had been teaching me lessons

to be authentic and to find a true version of my own self

that I could finally take out into the world.

I realized that the Universe was teaching me to love better, trust more,

have more intention in all that I do and show up consistently and with truth.

But the hard part of all these realizations

is the sustenance of it all.

Life gets in the way again

and we tend to forget the lessons we learnt.

So what is the Universe really teaching me right now?

What must I learn in this enormous deafening silence

as I lay on my bed and let time wash over me?

silence

silence slows us down-

by either comforting

or overwhelming us.

In its comfort

we are all children

in the womb-

safe and protected.

In its overwhelmingness

we are claustrophobic

and gasping for air-

deaf and mute.