Something in the Silence

     Ever since I was young I remember a peculiar fear of silence. I would turn on fans, open windows, go to bed first--anything to know there would be noise lulling me to sleep. I'd stay up nightly listening to a cd 3 times through until I stopped singing the lyrics. I'd do anything not to fall into silence. Silence: The condition or quality of being or keeping still and silent. 2. The absence of sound; stillness. 3. A period of time without speech or noise. 4. Refusal or failure to speak out. All of these angles of the defintion are terrifying to think of. Silence causes that ringing in your ear where you wonder if someone were to enter your brain--if they were to hear it too. Silence allows you to block out the world and think every thought imaginable without anything to save you from it. Silence locks down every reply, every defence. But maybe, just maybe there's something in the silence.
     Would you want someone to speak and ruin the moment when you fly? Or would you want to have the whole place hushed, in awe at the wonder of such a moment? Can silence have an impact? Can no words or sound make you keep reaching for something worthy to say that you keep quiet because nothing could equate such beauty? Is silence merely the way that we reach a level at realizing maybe we don't have all the answers? Is silence what teaches us to search and find? Is the quietness I feared, somehow the most genuine music of all?
      These days I take time and listen to the stillness, the calm. Sometimes in the midst of a pause and waiting we find our fear isn't what we expected. The need for my favorite thing came from silence. If there wasn't silence then I couldn't hear music and I would cherish it the same way. Maybe all it's ever been trying to do is make me listen.

"Oh, I got nothing, oh, I got nothing Oh, I wanted words but all I heard was nothing." -The Script