Silence

“He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.”                                                                 -Elbert Hubbard



          I often have trouble with silence, whether it's I who have to be silent, or just being surrounded by it.  I always feel somewhat unsettled by the lack of sound. Right now, silence seems to be the hardest word to hold.  It's strange, something in my life goes wrong and what do I do?  I tend to turn to silence for help.  The one thing that I can never seem to get a grip on.  To be completely honest, the silence makes me extremely uneasy.  I am an expressive person, I love being able to show who I really am through my voice and my actions.  But at times, I feel handcuffed from doing either of these natural impulses.  Not by force, but by choice.  Extremely hesitant choice.  I don't want to make the wrong move, or say the wrong thing.  I don't want to ruin what's still there, and yet find out what actually is not.  As wonderful as truth is, it can be as sharp as a knife sometimes; and when your already in exhausting pain, you really don't feel like testing the waters any further.  

“Seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realize that silence has a sound.” 

― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

             So I guess my motivator to remain silent is fear.  Fear of not being enough, or not being able to measure up in my own mind more so than the minds of others.  There is a great deal of power in fear, but what really matters I'm finding out, is how you use your fear.  So my fear can be the motivator behind my irritating silence.  I'm not sure how long my silence will take to straighten out things in my minds view when things go wrong, but I know silence really does speak louder than anything I can say.  Sometimes, you just have to be quiet in voice and in action; and hope as hard as you can, that the day will come when you can break your silence.  So, how do I sound?