Timeout

There was a time I could go days without speaking… I truly enjoyed quiet solitude.
I would come home from work every day and go straight to my room.
Mornings were especially sacred… I refused to speak before 9am, and if forced to do so, the response wouldn’t be pleasant.
I don’t think it was depression, I simply preferred peace. Human interaction drained me.

Then I had a baby. Even when all he did was coo and look at me lovingly, I was compelled to return that energy.

I recall during my very traumatic pregnancy my girlfriend Aisha would call me mute because I barely uttered a word. I was completely spent from throwing up 24/7… so that added to my predisposition to ‘going mum’ and made me an impenetrable wall… with absolutely no guilt to accommodate anyone who wanted conversation, even if they were just checking to see if I was okay.

I think I suffered some form of depression before he arrived. I loved the quiet solitude before, but now my silence was required: to remain sane… to quiet the voice in my head enquiring “Why me? Why so much pain just to bring new life into this world?”
I remember some days thinking that I was going crazy… the deep, solemn crazy that gives no notice that a tornado is brewing.

Sometimes after I brushed my teeth I’d look in the hospital mirror and say simple words out loud like “Hello. Crystal.” just to see if I still had a voice. 😂
A fly on the wall must’ve had some stories to tell its friends about this crazy lady talking to herself every morning.
Nothing excited or saddened me; most days I felt blank… no emotion whatsoever. I was ‘silent-mad’.

8 odd years later, I no longer enjoy these self-soothing periods of isolation, because having a child inhibits such luxuries.

But admittedly I do slip into very brief moments occasionally, to regain my footing as I take a deep breath and bask in the stillness … to turn off the world and silence my racing mind; but I never stay there.

So go A.W.O.L, ‘fall off the grid’, re-group, re-centre, restore, then return to life as you know it.
Sometimes it’s necessary.