On Companionable Silences (and the need to fill them) – A Review

Anyone with a blog bounds to be talkative.

That’s the point of a blog. You finally have a space where you can say whatever you want without fear of being interrupted or feeling as if you talked too much and gummed up the entire conversation space.

And boy, am I talkative.

The woman I live with can attest to that. She is a thoughtful kind of person, and by that I do mean she is kind, but I also mean that she is full of thoughts. She has got an overwhelming ability to think. It’s kind of scary if you don’t think about it. But when you do think about it, it feels nice, like you know you have someone on your side that can help you with the big problems when they start probleming all over the place. And in her thoughtfulness, she is very capable of being quiet.

Me? I’d say I’m not full of thoughts. That’s not to say, I don’t think. It’s just that about 95% of the way up my body there’s a leak where the thoughts spill out like mentos in coke. That is to say I think with my mouth, hence the blog.

Whenever I’m experiencing silence (or more aptly, silence is experiencing me) I truly am falling apart with the need to fill it. If you want to argue against that please try, but be sure to include in your legal briefcase that I put headphones in for the two minutes I’m brushing my teeth.

I just don’t do well in the quiet.

I don’t know why. My best guess is that my brain just gets nervous. I start to think about terrible things or I just go off the rails with assumptions on top of assumptions, it’s really quite annoying to be honest.

So, I babble or I have background noise almost all the time. There are of course exceptions. Like what? Why I’m glad you asked.

The first exception is when I’m writing. But I suppose that’s because writing is sort of like talking, and I also suppose because it’s really hard to think and write while listening to anything that has words in it.

The second exception is reading. Which makes sense, because reading a way to put other thoughts in your brain instead of your own.

The third exception is when I’m with my girlfriend (that’s why I brought her up before, it was foreshadowing). See, out of respect for her thoughtfulness I’ve been slowly learning to enjoy a peaceful moment not-quite-alone with my thoughts.

And since she’ll probably read this, I do want to point out that this is still a work in progress. I am known to speak for the entire length of dinner and thus have half a meal left when she’s already finished hers.

I think the reason I have a lot of trouble with the silence is the same reason I have trouble blogging at the moment. There’s just a lot of uncertainty! And my brain seems to have a built-in track it likes to take me down full of anxious/embarrassing moments it wants me to revisit. Or terrible things to consider about myself and my future and what everyone else thinks about that. And I just want to push those out and do the escaping thing, which is quite easy to do when you can listen to a YouTube video or just talk over the static.

But all that noise is worth a lot less than just being in the car, or sitting on the couch, or on a walk with someone you love and experiencing whatever it is together.

So, thank you Maddie. I appreciate you and your infinite patience for all things me.

And to the rest of you, thanks for reading!

I don’t know if I’m back writing blogs but I was sitting alone in silence for a moment and just couldn’t bear to do it any longer. But two in a row is pretty good all things considered.