To all my extrovert friends. I’m sorry you are suffering from this prolonged visit to my kind of world. But, in all honesty, if it were not for your discomfort. I would wish the world like this always.
I like quiet. I like silence. To me, these things are good.
They are safe. They are peaceful and without violence.
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As you feel uncomfortable in a world that is moving a bit too slowly for you, the “normal” world feels a bit too fast and crowded for me. The lights are too bright, too harsh.
This slower world, with its breezes and the patter of rain on the roof, I’m happy with it and I will be sorry to see it go.
Something I haven’t told my readers before is that at one point in my life I lived alone for nearly two years. There is a little house, by a creek, on a road that leads nowhere, in Meat Camp, NC where I spent 2 years healing.
I was removed from the world for a little while in my 20s. In a time of life that most people equate with experimentation and adventure, this tiny house became one of the most important shelters of my life.
I have so many stories from that time of my life. The house was near the bend in the creek, and stories were caught daily in the thickets along the banks. There was always something new to see or learn.
I think the reason that haven is in my thoughts today is that I learned so much in the silence. I learned how to sit with myself again on the steps at the kitchen door. I found my laughter caught in the tangle near the footbridge.
I found so many of the pieces that I had surrendered or cut away to please someone else. A toxic person that even though they were hundreds of miles away – I still feared, because of what they had shaped me into. But, those tales are for another day.
Today I wish all my extrovert friends could see the world as I do.
To me, this isn’t a dull boring place. I’m not lonely. What I see is a sky that is so clear and blue that it makes my heart ache. I see people walking. Not hurried steps desperate to “be there” – but slow steps of people who “are here”.
The colors are more intense, the green of the maple leaves against the sky is a shocking clash of color. The silence lets me hear the trees sigh in the breeze. I can hear the birds overhead and the squirrels chittering as they race around the bottom of the trees.
I wish all my extrovert friends could see what I see.”
And, more than that, I wish that it could be as great a balm for them.
But, I know that many, perhaps most, people want to resume “normal”. This quietude makes them restless and irritable. The world on pause feels so much more welcoming to me. Without clashing noise of the constant burble of voices, I find the world welcoming. I might even say “better”.
I know this condition won’t stay.
But I hope that all my extrovert friends will remember these days when all the noise of life is resumed. Perhaps they can then understand a bit, what it is like for me to live in their world
Like the wildlife, I am enjoying the respite from the persistent human pace of normalcy. Until the world breaks out again in progress and activity I’ll just be over here. Enjoying the quiet.