the antidote

I forgot how much I missed the quiet.

Maybe that's what I've been looking for after all this time. I rarely get any time with me anymore, in between all of the hours of work and driving and school and assignments and tests and conversations and advice and laughter and tears and who knows what else.

Sometimes you can get so caught up in everybody else's lives that you forget to live your own. You ask everyone else how they're doing and you forget that you forget to ask the same question to yourself. You try so hard to be there for everyone else that you forget to that you need things too.

And what I've needed most is quiet. It's different than silence, which is like quiet but forced, like in the library where there are so many people in a confined area making noise while trying not to make noise. Quiet is different than silence. It's about about ticking clocks instead of anxiously clacking computer keys. It's about peace instead of tension. It's about seeing the beauty in the barren apple orchards or the old wooden table instead of staring at stark white walls and gray carpet.

Quiet is calming, letting my mind think at its own pace, allowing thoughts follow whatever paths they want instead of redirecting them through music or people or words, or having to refrain from thinking in order to focus on the task at hand. Some people say a picture is worth a thousand words, but thoughts are even better because they are pictures created of words without needing to be spoken or seen, which allows them to be infinite. It allows me to find the quiet.

Quiet is letting my spirit break free of my body for a little bit, letting it start to find the fractured pieces of my emotional shell and trying to glue them back together with kind thoughts and smiles to myself and sunshine patterns on the walls.

Quiet is healing.