Silence Speaks

Blogland is lonely; I ain’t gonna lie to ya.

Over here on The Blog, seems I be talking to myself, which I am pretty good at fortunately, but – still – seems like I sentenced myself to silence

Over there in Facebook, I got a lot of love.  Folks be commenting all the time.  It was chatty and congratulatory.  What woman doesn’t want a cup of that?

Indeed, things at Facebook were going so well.  My long posts were catching on…after just four long years in the throes of mothering toddlers:  I was deranged and candid…just like Honey Boo Boo, and look how trendy she is! 

Facebook Friends would see twelve paragraphs, my signature post size, and they would just know it was from me.  They didn’t even have to understand the entire thing.  They could just read the first and last paragraph and then throw me a bone.  It was loving. 

Now, I check my blog stats, and I am being read. 

Sure. 

My words have been read by over 3500 people now. 

But…psst…like, who are these people? 

I feel so revealed; yet, to whom?  Why am I writing this blog?  Why did I stop blogging all over Facebook?  It wasn’t broken…why did I fix it?

But, nonetheless…I felt I needed to blog.  My husband said something inspiring one day, and I had to blog.  He probably didn’t even know what he was saying….  Heck, he probably wasn’t even talking to ME.  But, it was like he inserted a quarter, and out popped a blog.  No thinking.

Perhaps this blogging is a necessary segue between talking to my family and talking to...strangers.  

This takes guts, talking to outsiders, and – yes – it is a lot less congratulatory.  I mean, your family – even if it is your Facebook family – is very skilled at telling you that you look nice even when you have an apple-sized zit on your nose.

But, these silent strangers...

can they be trusted?

.

I am betting, based on my history, that I am getting what I need. 

I just don’t like it – right away. 

It takes some getting used to. 

What I mean is that – to grow, perhaps as a writer…perhaps as a person – I probably need a little silence,

and a little less acknowledgment,

and maybe a little less agreement.

I don’t know why yet.  I am just sitting here, all silence and stuff, waiting. 

Like sitting in your white “tie it in the back” gown at the doctor, and you can hear the voices outside the door, and you have been waiting in that room, staring at every tacky picture on the wall, to include the long-haired lady with the umbrella on the boat who is now morphing into a dude with a beard,

and you were sure you were dying, which is why you came to the doctor - you urgently hobbled over here to report your symptoms and get some feedback….

So, now you are waiting in this sterile holding cell...anxiously, you tap your foot, waiting, staring, thinking, repeating your symptoms over in your head…for like 45 minutes, in your white cotton gown with green stripes - ew, with your rearend numb and cold, and every time you hear just a little tap near your door...just a little rustle, you sit up straight like, “Oh…yeah…someone is coming in; we are going to get some answers,”

but …no one comes yet,

and so you sit some more, and you attune your listening just a bit further, and now you can hear even the faintest nurse noises down the hallway, and you are able to detect what room the doctor is in…the guy on the other side of the wall is talking to a doctor..they sound chipper...maybe that guy will make it...

and you are completely in the WAITING, doing everything there is to do while waiting...

and by the time the doctor actually comes IN,

you are over all of it. 

You waited yourself well.

Had the doctor entered earlier, all the emotions would have been fresh; your blood pressure would have been through the roof, and you could have convinced the doctor of anything.

But, he waited, so you waited.

And the doctor could quickly see there was nothing much wrong with you.

Had he come earlier,

He might have been convinced of something else,

and YOU could have remained YOUR focus.

Sometimes we are trying to go backwards.

Sometimes, we wait…

To learn we don’t need much of anything…

To learn that we are as we should be - for the moment...

Which allows me to move past myself.

To know what I SHOULD be doing.

To know that what I should be doing has very little to do with me,

other than I am the one who has to do IT.

YOU are the ONE.

And, so…I think this silence is what I need.  The waiting is what I need.

It doesn’t mean to quit – we shouldn’t quit just because the result is not what we are used to receiving.

It might mean to check your motivation.

I think I was writing for me.

I think I am supposed to write for someone else.

And I shouldn’t need a comment.