Silence

When I was a child I used to fear the silence. One of the tortures I endured was being thrown into a small closet with no light, and being left there for days at a time.

As a six-year-old, I was terrified of the silence because it represented that closet. Dark, lonely, cramped. All alone, after a day the air would become stale and permeated with the taint of urine and feces from where I soiled myself. The only sounds I would hear were my shallow breathing and my quiet sobs, for I had learned the hard way to remain quiet in that closet, and never bang or knock on the door.

I am in my fifties now. I’ve served over thirty years in prison, and it is almost funny, because now I miss the silence.

When I chose to alter my reality, to change who I was into someone I could love and accept, I spent over a decade working through the trauma of my childhood. Years and years of analyzing myself, doing self-therapy and facing brutal truths about myself have resulted in someone who has conquered that fear of silence.

Now I am surrounded by noise 24 hours a day. Seventy other men talking, arguing, laughing. The TV blaring, the fans constantly running—many of which squeak. Even at 2am the fans are going. In addition, I can hear men snoring, the whir of PAP machines, the occasional couple laying on the floor rutting.

Now I long for silence once in a while, and I am amazed how, by changing my mindset, my fears have become my desires.

However, I have found one place that I can go to escape all of the noise, a place of blessed silence—inside myself. I took up meditation a while back, and I have discovered a place of silence while sitting in the middle of a madhouse.

Sometimes my meditations are as peaceful as the most remote island on a perfectly calm day. Other times, when I am meditating to work on my issues, it is scarier than even that closet used to be. But it is always silent within myself.