Finding My Voice

Sometimes all is quiet in me. Even my breath and my heart are on mute. The music I usually carry within my bones falls to a hush.

For a mind that regularly tastes the bitter and the sweet of life at every step, this omission is shocking. As my soul clambers for awareness, recognition of anything familiar, it aches within the void.

The quiet is not about disconnecting in our over-connected world. It’s not about turning off the external stimuli. It’s me. The quiet comes from inside, and I don’t know why it comes. It often comes without warning, and it is a booming silence.

Have you ever attended a concert where the detonation of music is so loud it vibrates within you? And when it’s over you are left with a droning hum in your head, as if your ears are trying to compensate for the lack of extreme turbulence within your cochlea.  That vibrational hum is what happens to my entire body…..all the time. I feel my way through life. My body trembles with, and sometimes against, what vibrates around me. The earth is constantly moving, life is beginning and ending all around us. Energies and reverberation change. I change. I feel the fluctuation in weather – not temperature – air pressure and light and changes in clouds. I feel the seasons, the months, the days. Have you ever thought about what a Tuesday feels like? I know what it feels like for me. Every Tuesday has that feel. It’s not about being busy, or tired, or happy or frustrated. It could be any of those things. But, first, it will always feel like Tuesday.

When I spend my days being able to feel things like a Tuesday, stillness is startling. The vibrations are where my voice begins. Deep inside me I feel the peace of the mountains, or the anger of the seas, I feel the fear of the city and the confidence of the country. It is glorious and enveloping and wondrous and overwhelming and exhausting. But it gives me a voice, a voice that is strong – sometimes loud and sometimes a whisper – but always strong. Sometimes it begs to be shared and sometimes it stays safe within my head. It is as if the vibrations shake the words and thoughts around until they are sorted properly and can be put together into marvelous ideas. I sing out with “I love you because…” or “you hurt me when…” or “my idea is…” I have a voice.

And at times I feel nothing. When the vibrations slow or stop I lose my voice. The words tumble within the empty cavern, falling away from each other, and from me. Tranquility is lost to disorder. My body no longer sings with the world. I can’t feel what is around me. There is only silence. This is the stillness I endure now. The hum is still there, I am sure it is somewhere deep within me. Maybe. But there is no rhythm, no harmony to buoy my words. This very post has taken 9 months to extricate from random fragments left discarded in the silence. I have dug for each letter and fought for each word. They are not strong, but they are reaching for power.

I don’t like the feeling of this reticence. I want to breathe in the waves and exhale mountains. I want my heart to beat in time with the pulse of the stars. I want to find my voice again. I don’t know how long it will take. Can someone un-mute me, please?