Raspberry Iced M

It is 12:16 a.m. My husband has gone to work. My son has gone to bed.

It’s just me. And the dogs. On the couch. In the quiet.

I used to hate the quiet. Not the literal kind, because introverts do re-energize mostly in solitude.

I’m talking about the kind of quiet where nothing is demanding your immediate attention. No conversation. No crisis. No t.v. playing in the background.

The kind of quiet where it’s just me. My thoughts. My discomfort.

I hated the kind of quiet that made the noise in my head much more noticeable.

For a long time, silence gave my brain entirely too much freedom. And my brain has never needed encouragement. Give that girl ten unsupervised minutes and she’ll reopen a case from 2007.

And quiet meant thinking.
And thinking meant remembering.
And remembering meant analyzing.
And analyzing meant questioning.
And questioning meant doubting.

And before long, I wasn’t sitting in my living room anymore. I was mentally sentencing every awful thing I’ve ever done…every awful thing I’ve ever felt…every awful situation I’ve ever experienced.

To combat that, I stayed busy. There are a thousand ways to avoid being alone with your own thoughts.

Television.
Social media.
Shopping.
Cleaning.
Working.
Planning.
And obsessing over another person’s behavior.
Creating imaginary conversations.
Finding a new problem to solve.

Sometimes what looks like productivity is actually avoidance with a planner.

I know that now. But I didn’t always. And there were times when I needed something – anything – to occupy enough of my brain that I didn’t have to sit with whatever was underneath all of the busyness. Because if I got still enough, eventually I would find myself. And at one point in my life, even as recently as a year ago, I didn’t like her very much.

And I won’t lie – I am still not completely comfortable in the quiet. I won’t pretend I’ve reached some enlightened state where I can close my eyes and hear birds chirping and feel metaphorical butterflies land on my shoulders.

I still overthink. I still remember things I wish I could change. I still have uncomfortable thoughts. I still experience shame. I still cry because I’m lonely. I still have moments when my brain decides that 2:44 a.m. is an excellent time to review every questionable decision I’ve made since I hit puberty.

But the difference is that the discomfort is tolerable. I don’t immediately try to shove it away or try to escape it. I can sit…notice what I’m thinking…feel whatever comes with it…and remain where I am.

That’s new.

Maybe it’s because I trust myself more. When I think back on what might have changed that created an ability to tolerate my discomfort, I wonder if it’s because the life I am living now – the life I have been living for a year – is more aligned with the things I value.

It’s not perfect. It’s aligned.

I know what matters to me more than I used to. I know the kind of person I want to be. And increasingly, my actual choices resemble what I have prioritized.

That’s created a kind of internal peace that I didn’t even know was missing while I was making decisions with limited emotional capacity.

When the person you want to be and the person you’re being live miles apart, silence is brutal. There’s nowhere to hide. But when those two people start moving closer together – intentionally and slowly – something shifts. There is less to run from.

My therapist tells me that we can’t control what thoughts enter our mind.

I don’t have to like every thought. But that doesn’t mean that the uncomfortable thought needs to be addressed with urgency. I can think:

I really regret that. And sit there.
I miss him/her. And sit there.
That still hurts. And sit there.
I’m scared. And sit there.
I don’t know what’s going to happen. And sit there.

I don’t have to address every thought or fix every feeling associated with every thought. I don’t have to reach some grand conclusion before I can go to bed. Some things can just exist – and be uncomfortable – for a while. And contrary to what I once believed, discomfort is not fatal. Sadness is not fatal. Rejection is not fatal. Being hated, ignored, dismissed – still not fatal. And I’ll admit that this was disappointing news to the part of my brain that had been treating every unpleasant emotion like a five-alarm fire.

In some ways, I now see quiet as a blessing. It gives me somewhere to tell myself the truth.

The strange thing is that the very place I used to avoid has become one of the places I can hear myself clearly. Quiet lets me notice when I’m slipping into an old pattern. It lets me recognize when I’m afraid. It gives me space to ask if what I am thinking is the truth. It allows me to admit when I was wrong without immediately defending myself. It gives me enough space between emotion and action to choose what happens next.

Quiet used to feel like a trap. Now it sometimes feels like finally getting to check in with myself.

And the biggest blessing that quiet has given me is the space to talk to Jesus.

There is another kind of noise I’ve had to learn to turn down – my own. I can pray and still spend most of that prayer telling God exactly what I think He should do.

Fix this.
Change that.
Bring this back.
Make this person understand.
Give me an answer.
Please hurry.

And I think God appreciates those types of prayers, because they’re honest.

But I am learning that there is also room to just be with Him. “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10). Stillness requires something of me – that I stop trying to control the next five minutes long enough to remember Who holds them.

I used to see quiet as emptiness. Absence.

Nobody is calling.
Nothing is happening.
There is nowhere to go.
There is nothing to distract me.
Something is missing.

But now I can experience quiet as something that is actually present.

Rest.
Safety.
Prayer.
Reflection.
Contentment.
A sleeping puppy.
A cup of coffee.
A notebook.
A Bible.
A couch.
An ordinary evening with no emergencies or drama.

There are still things about myself I am learning to accept. There are still memories I don’t enjoy encountering. There are still questions without answers. There are still relationships I cannot fix. There are still parts of my story I wish I could rewrite.

But as I sit here in the quiet tonight…I don’t feel the need to outrun any of those things. I can acknowledge them without handing them control of the rest of my night.

I can sit in this room. With Him. And myself.

And I can stay.

I changed my mind about quiet. I used to think it was uncomfortable because there wasn’t enough happening. And now I think it was uncomfortable because there was too much happening inside me.

And maybe the fact that I can tolerate it says something about the life I am building.

Not that I’ve resolved everything. Or forgiven myself for everything. Or that every thought in my head became kind overnight.

But I’m living closer to my values.
I’m learning to trust my own choices.
I’m figuring out that an uncomfortable feeling doesn’t require immediate resolution.
I’ve decided that I don’t have to run from every version of myself that I encounter in the silence.

There was a time when quiet left me alone with someone I desperately wanted to escape. But now – more and more – it leaves me alone with someone I am learning to tolerate. Maybe even someone I can eventually learn to respect.

And that might be quiet finally feels different.

The silence didn’t change.

I’m just becoming someone who doesn’t need to run from what she hears in it.