My mind has remained silent for quite sometime, and perhaps it’s more my lips that have remained tightly sealed.
After calling out and calling in, I removed myself from the world I knew, the world that was a home for eighteen years. I felt betrayal, anger, and a sorrow that only a veteran heart could truly still hurt from. As of my last stand, I could not listen to the music that I once heard live on a guitar, I couldn’t take the salt that was being rubbed into wounds that were slow to heal, slow to mend, slow to move past that puckering skin stage.
But I broke a wall, I broke the dam that held back the feelings, the emotions, the hurt. That isn’t to say that I let all of it flood down upon me, but I broke away some of the brick and mortar that held back what was scorching and burning away at my soul.
I started to move away from my past. I began to breathe again; to breathe easy.
At a point in time, I was sleeping no more than three or four hours at a time. I would lay awake in bed for hours at a time, begging sleep to take me away, to silence the thoughts running through my mind. I’d awake at eight in the morning, with nothingness greeting my opened eyes.
Then something clicked, a few gears in my deus ex machina began to click together, not all of them, but just enough to bring about a sliver of sunshine. Apply for a job here, a hostess job, but a job. Just try, she said. She urged. So, I faced my fears of being underemployed, and I struck out and applied. There I stood not a week later, greeting customers to Abby Lane.
My birthday, a dreaded came if only because I knew what plans could have been before me, came and went with much surprise and happiness. Those who celebrated with me, I will forever cherish and love above all else, if only because they were there for me during a time when I couldn’t even see the sunlight on a cloudless day. Those intentionally, and unintentionally, involved were part of my saving grace, of the turn my life was taking to being once again happy, for there is no other word to describe where I wanted to be again other than happy.
I met new people, I began to forge friendships, and though many may never know it, those kind words, those sarcastic comments that passed between us, those smiles, the laughter, changed my world and my life.
If there’s anything I have learned over the past year of my life, it’s that you should never underestimate the power that’s behind a small conversation, or a smile that you exchange with someone.
Regardless, working again, I relearned when it meant to be a payable slave, to obey something other than my own desire. So my mind remained silent at the most inopportune moments. I’d work, and while there, I’d have these words and sentences bubbling over and seizing my mind; I’d remain helpless, incapable of transcribing everything running through my mind. So I remained silent.
But I learned sometimes, silence is the answer. Silence can be an answer, a statement in and of itself.
Sometimes time away can do the heart and mind good.
The silence from my mind means only one thing, building and creating. For something great, for something that can only represent myself perfectly. I’m not sure when that day will arrive, but I’m no longer worried.
I’m happy, and that’s something I’ve been scared to admit not only to myself, but publicly. I’m terrified of jinxing myself, of losing the happiness I have not felt since September of a last year. A feeling so pure that it erases all doubt of anything negative.
I am happy. I have found a happiness for now. And given my circumstances, of falling outs and forging new bridges, I have learned a few things.
When faced with a decision, always choose happiness.
When worried about losing your happiness, speak up. Speak out. Those that tell you that “Yes, you will lose your happiness” can be walked past, don’t be afraid. But the ones that tell you, “Yes, you may falter, you may stumble, but I’ll be here” are the ones that stay, they’re the ones worth keeping.
At a certain point, the years of a friendship no longer matter. What matters are the ones that stood by your stupid, careless decisions and still loved you.
Always choose love.