“Why are you so quiet?”

Sometimes, it takes a minute or two for that question to snap me back into reality, and even longer for me to try and think of the shortest, to-the-point answer that won’t lead into an hour long discussion. Although I may seem quiet on the outside, inside my head is nothing but noise, chaos, memories flashing in and out of my peripheral view like slides on a wall. Sometimes it’s so loud and so uncontrolled that everything outside of my body turns into white noise. My brain puts my body on auto-pilot, and I can find myself in the middle of a room, or crowded restaurant, or even in a car, and not even fully be able to remember how I got there. Did I run any red lights? What did we talk about? Why am I hungry but full?

I can feel today is like that, and luckily I haven’t had to interact with people, or the general public, for more than a minute at a time.

You see, when I get “quiet” on the outside, but it’s “loud” on the inside, what I’m doing is frantically trying to put everything back in it’s place and make the noise stop. I can picture myself, running around a room, trying desperately to put papers and things back in order, as every window is opened to a windstorm and things just keep flying all over the room. Each time I put something away, three more things fall out of place, crashing loudly to the floor or gliding on the wind just out of my reach. This room is the room I like to keep locked most days, this is not a room I willingly choose to visit. This room, this space I’ve created, is where I like to put things that I can’t erase, but would rather not be reminded of. This is not my happy place – my silence is not contentment. But just like anything left to be forgotten, as with anything left to decay and rot over enough time, the hinges have become weak and the windows cracked. My comfort in forgetting has allowed me to become over-confident that I won’t ever have to go there again. And at times, I can hear that door open again and am reminded that I was lazy.

I have become sort of accustomed to waiting out the storm now. It takes less of my energy to calmly wait for things to calm down, than it does to run around in a mental panic trying to fix what I know can never truly be fixed – only put away. It still exhausts me, still pulls at my temper and my emotions, keeping me teetering on the edge of a blow-out, but my balance has become much better, and I’ve become an acrobat of my own mind. Today’s show? The tightrope.