Silence Used to Feel Dangerous. Now It Feels Like Peace.

During my relationship, I became hypervigilant to his emotions, facial expressions, moods, needs, everything. His chaotic and intense feelings and emotions were so sudden that I constantly lived in this hypervigilant state, worrying about when he would have another tantrum or emotional outburst. I did everything in my power to keep things light and peaceful, and this exhausted me. Even subconsciously, I would be scanning my environment, and his mood, just to make sure that I felt safe.

A big part of this was avoiding silence.

I could not sit in silence in this time of my life. The silence was so... loud.

So I filled silence in every way possible. I always had music playing in the background, or a show or movie on. I needed some kind of noise around me. Even when I was doing something completely ordinary, there was almost always something playing in the background. I think I was trying to make sure there was never enough quiet for me to hear what was actually going on inside of me.

If I did catch him silent, I would instinctively always ask, "Are you okay?" with so much fear in my voice. I know he would get frustrated that I would ask him all the time, but a subtle shift in his face auto-triggered me to this fearful place. It would take over my body, and I would be filled with anxiety, stress, and fear. My heart would start pounding, my mind would be racing, and I'd be scanning all the recent past moments that could have caused him to be angry.

The worst was when he would say, "Nothing is wrong," because most often times, that would turn out to be untrue.

Something was always wrong, and prolonging talking about it kept me living in this intense anxiety longer, and would worsen increasingly as time went by. I never knew if I was actually safe to relax, because I never knew when the next emotional outburst would come. So even in moments when nothing was actively happening, I was still preparing for something to happen.

I think that is what made silence so difficult for me.

Silence was not neutral anymore. It meant I needed to pay attention. It meant I needed to figure something out. It meant I needed to scan his face, his body language, his tone, the room, the energy, and everything that had happened recently to determine whether something was wrong.

I thought for a while that avoiding silence was part of my general anxiety. I thought I had just developed a new fear of, an incapability to be still, present, and silent. I stopped meditating, journaling, and eventually just became completely disconnected from my inner truth.

I thought avoiding this silence was helping me, but it was only the opposite.

If I had really sat and listened to the silence, I would hear my inner truth screaming to get away from this man. I would hear that I'm abandoning myself. I would hear that I'm dimming my light to make him comfortable. I would hear all the truths that I was intentionally avoiding.

Why?

I'm still not sure.

I think sometimes we know the truth before we are ready to do anything about it. Sometimes a part of us knows exactly what is happening, but another part of us is not ready to face what that truth would require us to change. So we find ways to stay distracted. We stay busy. We keep the music on. We keep the tv playing. We keep talking. We keep analyzing someone else's emotions instead of listening to our own.

For me, silence was where I could hear myself.

And I think that scared me.

Because underneath all of the noise, I knew.

I always had a part of me that was begging me to leave, to get away, but I didn't listen, until I finally did.

What I didn't understand at the time was that I wasn't broken. I wasn't developing new levels of anxiety. I wasn't suddenly incapable of being still or present. My body was responding to the environment I was living in, and my mind was trying to protect me in the only ways it knew how.

And at the same time, I was avoiding my inner truth.

Silence made it harder to avoid.

It gave me nowhere to run from myself.

But what I do know now is that I love silence.

It's almost been a year since this relationship thankfully has ended, and with each day, I find myself enjoying more and more about my life away from it. It wasn't like a click of a switch type of moment where silence stopped feeling dangerous. It happened slowly, without me even realizing it.

It was a realization I had recently, that I never really thought about until I was sitting in silence and thinking, "Wow, this is so nice, and so peaceful," in my head.

And then everything hit me at once.

I had all of these intense flashbacks, all the moments that I can remember going out of my way to stop any silence. All of the times I needed something playing in the background. All of the times I felt afraid when the room got quiet. All of the times I looked at his face and immediately started trying to figure out what was wrong. All of the times I was trying to prevent something before it even happened.

And now I was sitting in the exact same silence that I once tried so desperately to escape from, and I was thinking about how peaceful it felt.

That was when I realized how much had actually changed.

The silence hadn't changed.

I had.

The same thing that once made my body feel like something bad was about to happen had become one of the places where I feel safest. I can sit quietly now without needing to figure out what someone else is feeling. I can walk without music. I can be alone with my thoughts. I can sit outside and hear nothing but the sounds of nature around me. I can have a quiet day and not feel like I need to fill it with something.

I can just be. And I'm so grateful for that.

I spent so much time trying to create peace around me that I didn't realize I wasn't experiencing peace within me. I thought keeping things light, keeping things calm, preventing conflict, and making sure someone else was okay was creating peace. But real peace was something completely different....

Peace was not having to monitor the room.

Peace was not having to study someone's face.

Peace was not wondering when the next outburst would happen.

Peace was being able to sit in silence and know that I am okay.

I wasn't broken.

I wasn't incapable of being still.

I wasn't becoming more anxious for no reason.

There was a part of me that was trying to tell me something.

And now that I am away from that him, I can finally hear it.

I can hear myself again.

And what I hear in the silence now is very different.

I hear peace.

I hear my own thoughts.

I hear my intuition.

I hear the parts of myself that I spent so long trying to quiet. And finally now, I'm listening.