An Hour of Silence
I’m in a men’s group as I’ve mentioned in previous blogs. I go every week— it’s been around 2 years since I’ve missed a circle—it’s a priority in my life. I’ve had profound healing and I’ve discovered many things about who I am and why I am.
Last week, I came into the circle feeling flat. I haven’t had a vacation in 3 years because of my husband’s death in April of 2023. Vacations tend to be where my mind turns off, but more importantly, where I’m not task oriented. For a long time, I did take my work with me, and for that, I look back at myself and say, ARE YOU CRAZY?! I have an INFJ mind, and it’s rarely quiet. Even if I’m doing nothing, my mind is working hard. At my Wednesday circle, I felt like the last drop had been squeezed out of my turnip, and I felt out of integrity with myself for letting me get to that point.
Out of that, I agreed to a stretch where I would sit for an hour and do nothing. Yikes. I had resistance to doing it, but Saturday night I lit some sage and sat in my screened-in porch and stared into my gardens with pockets of darkness and up at the sage smoke collecting and swirling around the ceiling before whirling into the night sky. Within 5 minutes, I felt myself getting agitated. I wanted to check text messages, e-mails, college football scores, or do something other than sitting there. How meaningless! Tasks waited to be done! So I compromised— I decided to journal whatever thoughts came up.
This blog is about what came up in the hour of silence.
I started out feeling antsy, sad, and lonely. The urge to do something was overwhelming like I was an addict fighting off the next drag from a cocaine pipe. Words started to scrawl on the page, and my mind lurched towards doing inner work of which there is plenty of material to work with— my inner world is rich and has a lot to offer in terms of keeping me occupied (if not distracted).
A cry echoed in my mind— DO SOMETHING!
Sadness intruded— I have a lot of gratitude and I’m not happy being alone. I don’t like to think about it because I don’t believe that will change. So now I’m weeping. I want to be done with this— this hour of silence. I want to get away. I’m sitting in my husband’s favorite spot, and I’m missing him. I don’t want him to be gone.
I’m halfway through, and I feel like I’m going mad. This urge to do something has escalated to overwhelming. I’m having to write these words because I can’t stand it.
It’s getting easier. Some softening. But now I’m grieving again. This is a feeling that feels very weird. I feel out of time. My mind exists quite a bit in the future, and I feel the eventuality of my death— not imminent yet there, hovering in the future as a faint reality.
The silence strips to the truth. I survive by escaping, by retreating. I survive within walls, behind closed doors.
But it’s not me.
So here I am, this isn’t a renewal of energy— it’s a kind of work. I’m feeling a connection to LOMG (Land of My Grandfathers, location of my men’s circle initiation) which is out in the country north of Houston, a pastoral setting full of potent energy. But that could be a sage high because I’ve been inhaling a lot of it for almost an hour.
My mind is quieting. In the quiet is grief. The loss of my husband, being alone, of the pain of my life, of my eventual death— I’m crying— sobbing.
It’s 15-20 minutes later. The grief had been flowing, but it’s passed.
I’m pausing.
I’m glad I did this, but I also didn’t like it.
There is nowhere to hide in the silence.
