Can We Sit in Silence?

Communication- for some it is the easiest way of expression and for some, it is the most difficult.

I belong to the latter. Difficulty in communication and overthinking have always been the biggest issues in my life. I am 26 and I am still learning how to communicate rather than suppress my thoughts.

I am a big-time over-thinker and I can easily express something good but when it comes to the things that bother me, it becomes the most difficult for me to utter even a single word, and trust me it is the most annoying, suffocating and frustrating thing. My thoughts make me anxious, I just go silent, it makes me nervous and I just cannot eat or drink anything at that time.

People around me keep asking what’s wrong and I just go numb. There’s this rush of blood inside me and everything blanks out, I run out of words and just go silent. Complete silence with thousands of things inside my head.

This has made me suffer a lot in my life and I have lost a lot of relationships because of this issue. In 2015, I went to Bangalore for my studies and that was the turning point in my life. I suffered a lot and I learned a lot. I started therapy during that time but couldn’t continue due to some personal reasons.

But one thing I learnt from therapy was that it is way easier to communicate with a stranger. One day, I was thinking of what could probably be the reason for that and all I could think of was the fear of being judged! In my first session, I just met my therapist, and as soon as I uttered a word, I started crying because I was holding so much inside me.

It’s been almost 3 years to that day but that moment is still alive within me. My friends say, “tell me, you can open up”, for a moment I try but I fail. Some say, “leave her, let her be” and some persist but how to tell them that I need a safe space; a comfortable, silent space where I can try to speak up or can embrace silence.

Even today, I have changed a lot. I am trying to overcome and I have started trusting that at least my closest ones will not judge me. I have to trust them and I can open up in front of them but there comes a time when I fail and sometimes even my closest friends judge me according to my past behaviour and it makes me feel weak in my knees but I am not going to give up easily.

We over-thinkers are not rude, and no one should abandon someone for being the silent one. There might some things they are struggling to say but one day they will speak up if provided a space that is non-judgemental.

It is not easy to be the silent one when surrounded by people who love to speak and unintentionally hurting your loved ones by not being able to speak up. We just want someone to be comfortably silent with, we don’t want you to understand our silence, we just want your emotional presence.

Be humble and be gentle as we are not sick, we just think and feel too much and it is not easy for us to be as vulnerable as you are.

I hope, the next time you sit with someone like me, instead of judging them, you try to understand them and say, “don’t worry take your time, I am here and we can sit in silence.”

This story is written by Megha Wadhwa, a content writer, social media manager and a craft artisan. She loves to write and hence wrote this article with all her heart.