The Silence

Something had changed... Something was different...

But my darkness had followed me around for so long - it had become my familiar, my constant companion. Sadly, the silence ... had become - my safe place.

At 4 years old “the silence” had taken her first step in guiding my days. Where ‘never speaking unless first spoken to’ - became my mantra. This was a chosen world, the choice of a scared and frightened little girl that longed to please others and keep herself from punishment. She did not question and ponder any consequence of her personal agreement that day to keep silent and only answer others when they spoke first. This was just a 4-year-old mind, finding her own solution to hearing ‘children should be seen and not heard’ - having no idea of the years of isolation it would bring. Note to self now: when you are the only one left alone with you and you are the only one to rely on, speak and listen to … you are the only one to argue with, to find fault with... to despise. You are the only one that hears your thoughts, assumes no one understands and if they ever knew you - they could never love the real you. What a weight to put on the shoulders of a 4-year-old child - on purpose...

Fast forward 20 years and as I walk through this Centre... with the air conditioning touching my skin, bright lights paving a way I have seen hundreds of times. I have lived in this town all the life I can remember. It was in this same, stale place I made my commitment, and sadly - I am loyal. Whenever I make a promise - I keep it. I know that sounds like a sought-after quality we all want in honest friends - right? Doing what you say you will do – and being true to promises all the way to the end. But not in this instance, where what seems like decent morals clearing a good road ahead that will encourage me to be all I can be, instead I embraced a silence that haunted my soul for many sleepless nights of nightmares I could never share with another. Sometimes the very things we have committed to doing are the very things that begin to hinder and strangle the breath of our dreams that are struggling to catch their breath day after day.

But suddenly...today, in this same place, something had shifted. Something so foreign to me - I did not know what I was experiencing. How had it come about? What was this alien following me through the cold - hard floors I strolled? For the life of me- I could not tell you if this walk went for a few minutes - or an hour. It is like the hands of a clock had been holding its breath – afraid to make a move, to temp the winds-of-change into even more self-loathing if anyone dared see me move. Then... suddenly - those hands allowed themselves to move again, to move freely. Those hands that longed to tick over to the next minute, internally – behind its face - started to turn over, ever so slowly. Without doubt - making progress under ordinary circumstances, yet with a strange internal eerie-ness I had never experienced. I was almost at the end of this path, yet still wondering what this feeling inside me was, or what it was going to mean - if I had the courage to figure out this strangeness. Where did it come from and what did it mean?

Silence, still.

This was not uncommon. But hold on... this silence was not the same. This silence held a lightweight within it - that lifted me. This silence did not hold her breath and fear what others around me were thinking – or even look around to see who was there. This silence was not the heavy darkness I had restricted myself to, that gave years of anguish and internal criticism that tore me down like a thin piece of bark- ripped from the tree it was meant to protect. This silence was new, fresh, un-walked territory that I would spend the rest of my life exploring.

This silence... was peace.

The undiscovered Tremaine I had built around myself. Instead of the walls that shut me in, this wall was one of freedom- that would protect and allow me to do what I had not done in over 20 years, since the tiny 4 year-old had promised herself a life of not getting in trouble - by silencing herself. I reached the end of the Shopping Centre path, opened my mouth, then said “Hello!’ to a complete stranger...