A Still, Small, Quiet

     So I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about my future plans and the oddest thing keeps happening: I've been having an unreasonably hard time dealing with life and stress and pain and emotional abuse from my past that keeps coming back up.

     Now I know what you're thinking (if you either know me or have read anything I've ever written/typed before). You're thinking, "WELL DUH!" in you most sarcastic tone. I'd call you rude if I didn't completely agree but let's get past that and focus on this next part.

I have been watching How I Met Your Mother and decided kinda randomly to look for things Josh Radnor has done. He hasn't done much by way of acting but I found a TED Talks he did and a few interviews he did; the ones I watched were over an hour long and were very interesting. (Stay with me, this isn't a rabbit trail...trust me)

     So he did an interview with someone about meditation, something I have never put any thought into or cared about, and it turned out to be profoundly deep. It's on youtube and I highly recommend searchi9ng for it, but here's something that it imprinted on my mind for the last few days that connects with the direction my life has been going for a while now.

Radnor talked about what people think they need as a whole, most people think they need organization or to free up time or more power. All of those things have been granted to society through technology and that's awesome...except...none of that is what we truly need. We need quiet. We need to calmly listen to the universe and let it guide us.

     He went into much more detail about that, the conversation moved to healing and how we heal by moving on but never ACTUALLY heal. And those two thoughts had a very big impact on me because I thought about my absolute inability to even spend a moment in silence. Even one second without sound of some kind can be torture to me.

My first thought was, "I can't do that because..." and a barrage of reasons I am exempt from even trying to entertain a moment of silence ran through my head like a freight train; each car carrying a heavy excuse.

Some of them were valid like my history of silence consists of some of the most horrible memories and acts of violence or hatred. So every time I hear complete silence, I think of those moments or expect something to happen. So before any silence occurs, I turn on some old sit com (HIMYM much?) or pandora.com.

Some of those reasons were just excuses and didn't even make sense like because silence means I am losing. Losing what, you ask? I DUNNO! Seriously, there's a part of me that tells me I'm a loser somehow if I let myself feel something during silence. Makes zero sense...ze-ro.

     And I could go through a ton more but I'll spare your eyes and brains but the final outcome is that even the true or solid ones aren't right. They're reasons to basically stay where I am, to stay safe and hide my eyes from what needs to be seen...or I guess a better way of saying it is I'm covering a giant gash and letting it fester instead of taking care of it. The worst part is it's not physical so festering can fester SOOO much more without anyone knowing till I attempt suicide or have some outburst or something. Sometimes I get so good at ignoring it, I don't even know it's there...but it is.

So I have a goal for my immediate life:

     I want to find a way to truly accept silence. I want to be able to sit in a room with no sound (physically and emotionally) and be okay. Some people believe in the universe or God or something else; I believe and know God and it's absolutely becoming clear that God wants me to search for a truly soul healing joy. I know I'm being led to find a way to be actually happy and to stop hiding any and all injuries from myself.

     Here's where I get away from the sit com and celebrity part of my thoughts and get to real life applications: I'm considering yoga, meditation or some kind of source of actual dealing with my issues and healing from them. My transition, while slow, has been a huge part of me being honest and adding some things back to my life that I thought I lost for good. That's great and I am excited to see where that takes me in the future but this is an absolute necessary part of any growth as well.

I will face some very very tough times through this and I will need some friends and people to lean on at times; I can't do this alone...but I can do this. I'm also looking for what other people do or have done to soul cleanse or find a way to be okay even in silence.

     If you've experienced any of these thoughts or needs in your life, let me know. I want to hear where you are and learn from you as I hope to some day pass on my knowledge to someone else some day. Because as I live my life, I'm not just an "I" we're all connected and the only thing we can do is help each other.