Silence Among Other Things Crowding The Days

Dear E,

Exhaling in relief these days is nothing short of picking with chopsticks the beads of pearls swimming in a bowl of grease.

In times like this your lovely face floats from my memory and I think of you as you sleep warmly pillowed in the arms of another love while I toss and turn like paper boat quavering in brutal tides of a rocky stream.

I cannot even begin to flesh out the cocktail of frustration, despair, disappointment, betrayal and letdown crowding my professional and personal life these past few months. There is, however, the soundless ache, a dimly-lit corner I inhabit in moments of meaninglessness.

Silence.

Silence is a fate worse than wearing strings of misery, a necklace of grief. It is more vicious than a stab in the gut, wounding and leaving without a footstep. Silence is blindness in another guise that walks around in a foreign name. It is easy to weather furious cyclones of angry yells but silence is altogether a deceptive terrain to navigate. It is always pregnant with unsolicited mirages. It is an unforgiving mirror in which we discover our concealed fears. It is terrifying, menacing, a province we have no clout over.

How do you truly cope with silence? How would you gather your thoughts in a place shivering with soundless tremors of self doubts, rage, and hopelessness? Is it why we flee towards superficial, noisy nightspots? To drown the howls of our self-defeating selves?

What else can I say to you now except “It’s beyond difficult these days?” The more I ponder on life the more I become ever more nostalgic of the plainness of my childhood. Oftentimes I catch myself resenting the curse of adulthood, the trappings of indebtedness swimming alongside it's very nature. I begrudge being responsible for the sake of those who rely on you for unfaltering decisions and directions. I get weary of being a man whose reason to desert the comforts of bed in the morning is a strong sense of obligation. And for what? If there is a prize being handed out for perseverance and courage, then I'd hate to be pushy but I want to have my hands on it now.

On clear summer afternoons (like what we had today) I didn’t see forever like a song lyric would go. I saw glimmers of my own inadequacy laced with a nasty sneer of uncertainty dressing up for a field day. I am not giving up, however. You, of all people, are aware of my persistent nature and it is difficult to convince me out when my resolve is wedged firmly into a certain dream. Forgive me if I sound less and less optmistic. I did not write you to uncork a river of complaints. I did not write with intent of flooding your neatly-organized life with details of my personal woes. I am writing because maybe, just maybe, if I commit these thoughts into words they wouldn’t sound so bad after all. Only then I can exhale. Only then I can shrug my shoulder, and anticipate another sunrise with prayer and vigilance for an intangible smile to punctuate this seemingly messy day.

Humorless and weary, Loudcloud