Silence…
Every few weeks, I get into a mood where I do not want to talk at all. Now, to be honest, I’m not much of a talker to begin with – I generally spend most conversations listening to other people and responding to their questions or comments. I truly do not even think about starting conversations when there is silence, because I like silence. I do not believe there is such a thing as an awkward silence. Maybe this is because I don’t innately have expectations of other people, or maybe it’s just that I prefer to listen even when there are no words. I don’t know.
What I do know is that I am currently in a mood where I do not feel like talking or even communicating with anyone else. I am choosing to communicate with you, reader, in an attempt to understand more about why I feel this way by writing out my thoughts. In my mind, I am writing to the emptiness and silence of the cosmos. Maybe these thoughts will be heard, maybe they won’t. It doesn’t particularly matter either way.
When I get into these moods, I also feel very tired and want nothing more than to be alone on a mountaintop. I don’t want to be around other people at all. As I have responsibilities which require human interaction, I generally do not wander off into the wilderness when I get an urge to.
And, truly, I would like to wander off into the wilderness. I was made to live off the land, and to live in the land, and to be a part of the land. I am only Me when I am surrounded by plants, dirt, small animals, and silence. The human world is just too loud for me sometimes.
I have learned to adapt, of course, to living almost exclusively in a human-filled world. This is not to say there is anything “wrong” with being around humans, just that I get tired of it.
I have never met another human who has acknowledged an understanding of this. Generally speaking, people who hear me say, “I just need to be alone sometimes.” respond with, “What, you think you’re too good for us? You think you’re better than everyone else?” to which I have no additional response other than a simple and confused, “No.” I have never been able to understand why people automatically go to this defense when they feel offended by my wish to be Silent and/or Alone. It confuses me greatly, especially since I am just trying to express a feeling that comes from somewhere deep down in my soul – I need silence.
I can’t seem to grasp why this is offensive to other people. Perhaps it is that people believe I want to be away from them, specifically? I imagine that the thought process is something like: “She wants to be alone > She must want to be away from me > She must hate me > She must believe she’s better than me.” What I can’t seem to figure out is where the “better than” statement comes from?
I can say in all honesty that until about the age of 25, I thought that I was the worst piece of crap in the universe and deserved nothing more than to be squashed out of existence in the most painful and brutal way possible. I do admit that I would sometimes pretend to be arrogant or condescending because I was really hating myself and afraid of my own feelings and I didn’t know what else to do to get people to leave me alone. That was the persona I espoused because I learned it from watching other people who were considered “powerful”.
I don’t mean powerful as in strong or wealthy. I mean powerful as in ‘having the ability to influence and manipulate the emotions and thoughts of others’. I figured that if I could give other people an impression of me that was stable and “realistic”, they would stop trying to get me to talk. Essentially, if they agreed with or hated everything I had to say, they’d leave me alone. And, it worked.
I learned very young that there is something about me that touches on other people’s insecurities and negative emotions. I also learned that I can easily spot other people’s insecurities. And so, it was very easy for me to tailor my false persona to each specific person I encountered. Everybody knew a lot about me, but a significant portion of their knowledge was actually false and given to either boost their self esteem or cause them to dislike me.
And so, that’s how I have spent most of my life: alone in a sea of humanity because I chose not to let other people know the real me and have no problem with people hating me.
So here I am in this moment, feeling like I need to be alone. And, I am alone, to some degree. But, I am feeling very tired. It’s the kind of tired that makes you want to go to sleep and conveniently forget to wake up. I keep going because I refuse to give up, but sometimes this tiredness overwhelms me. I think that it is the solitude and silence of nature that cures or eases this feeling in me.
In winter, I feel this a lot because I am not outside very much. I don’t take as many walks and I don’t spend my weekends outside. I start to feel trapped and upset and (oddly) lonely when I can’t go outside.
It is difficult for me to reconcile this with what is expected of me by others. I need to be alone, but I am needed by other people. I tend to take care of other people’s needs before my own, but since other people never cease to be needy, my needs become null and void. I do not want to be null and void.
How do I learn to be important?