What is your relationship with silence? Is silence something that you avoid or that you seek to fill? Do you revel in the morning’s gentle hush before the onslaught of the working week has chance to seep into your bones?

Day to day, my relationship with silence is ever-changing and moves in waves, often depending on my mood. There have been other periods in my life when silence has shown a different face. During my childhood silence was an unwelcomed guest in my family home. Then, as I entered my twenties, silence took on a different form; like a spectre it stalked my nightmares as my struggle to balance university studies, a part-time job and home life dissintegrated into illness. It’s only after I emerged from the stress-fuelled brain fog that I began to examine my relationship with silence and learn to sit alongside it, even if I had not yet begun to like it.

The moods

I can’t remember when I became aware of my dad’s use of silence as a weapon but my body still houses the memory of how his silent days affected my young life. The memories linger in the clench of my jaw when I sleep, when my subconcious breaks through the protective wall I built around myself in wakefulness.

I remember one day as a small child, when I’d set off across the living room, toddling up to my dad as fast as my unsteady legs would carry me. With arms outstretched and my My Little Pony (the original 80’s version) t-shirt riding up over my plump arms, I’d waited, face upturned. There was no reaction from my dad to even suggest that I was in the room. Next I recall my mum ushering me into the garden and pointing at the pansies with petals like faces and smiling at how our cat looked like a statue curled up fast asleep on the lawn.

Days would pass by and the wedge between a happy home life and my dad seemed to expand. Nobody told me to avoid him but the after school routine seemed to speed up when he was in one of his ‘moods’. Mum would make tea a little earlier, help with my homework in between peering through the blinds of the front window and checking her watch. By the time dad arrived home from work – sometimes after 7pm – I’d be upstairs and ready for bed. As I grew up, my unformed mind interpreted Dad’s silence and absence as a rejection, I suppose, one I buried beneath my studies, determined to achieve and one day escape the silent days.

The silence is so loud

Once I left the family home and began to spread my adult wings, I felt lighter. I filled my days with my studies, over-planning and over-reading so as to keep up with the others in my class. My studies never came easy to me. I couldn’t slack off all term and then stay up the night before an exam with only a pot of coffee to fuel my revision and then breeze through with an A*. Only my friend Jo managed to do that and to this day I don’t know how she managed it! I studied for 12 hours a day sometimes – five hours if I had work that day too. Things took a nose-dive when I added job searching into my already frantic days. The worry about securing a job was real, especially since the banks had not long crashed.

Most of my class mates were from middle-class backgrounds and had plans to return to the family home if they couldn’t secure a job before graduation. For some, securing work would mean securing their very first job. I’d been working since I was 16 and didn’t have the safety net of the bank of mum and dad. It won’t come as a suprise to learn that I fell ill during final term.

In a nutshell I was exhausted. Mind and body threw hints my way in the form of infections and lingering bugs. I didn’t listen, choosing to work through the illnesses and still I worried about getting a job. I remember one day, dropping my laptop and bursting into loud bubbling tears for almost an hour. I couldn’t finish my essay. I couldn’t afford a new laptop. Everything was ruined.

Silence descended and I was forced to stop. When had silence become so loud? It grated on my frayed nerves. I couldn’t sit still. I had to drown out the silence. In the end I borrowed my sister’s old portable CD player (my ipod had given up the ghost long ago) and grabbed a few CDs from her, just to drown out the silence. This is something I laugh about now, how crazy I must’ve seemed to her – also, how retro are these references to obsolescent tech?

Peace in silence

Somehow time passed by and yes, I found a job – I was offered two actually – and I began to distance myself from the frenetic hours of studying.

About a month after I’d handed in my dissertation, I realised that I still felt quite poorly. I knew that my whirling thoughts and need for constant distraction was not normal. So I did what I always do when faced with a problem – I began to research it! Websites, books, magazines – I scoured them for solutions to the stress I was feeling. Let me tell you, I was willing to try anything. And that’s how me and my friend Lea ended up buying a yoga mat each and following a yoga DVD in her living room that hot summer. It’s also the reason why we took up cross stitching and crochet (her, anyway). Yes, I know – I was willing to try anything.

These new hobbies helped a little but I wasn’t fully invested, I’ll be honest. I did however, enjoy the free guided meditation I discovered in a magazine one day. I was sceptical to begin with. No one in my circle of friends did meditation and this was before Instagram, you have to remember.

The short meditation was a revelation. For the first time in months I could tolerate sitting in silence because the meditation meant that I was still doing something. I felt rested, as though I’d had a nap. It was unexpected and if I’m honest, a relief! Relief because I’d finally come to terms with the silence and because I now had a sure-fire way to help quieten my mind when it got too loud.

I still meditate these days. It’s not always formal, sit down meditation. Sometimes it’s a walking meditation, other times it’s a variation on mindfulness where I’ll force myself to notice every movement as I wash the dishes after dinner. That’s the great thing about meditation, it’s portable!

I’ve come to realise that silence isn’t static. It’s not one way of being. More often it is experienced by our own interpretations. And that’s ok.