They say sound gets lost in space. Millions of restless, vibrating particles endlessly travelling, silenced by emptiness. I open my mouth to speak, lips moving, heartbeat racing, but you don’t hear what I say.
I’ve written a dozen words, sentences, things I want to say to you. But now, ce moment, just when I’m ready to talk, you’re unable to hear my voice.
You see, just like Robert Frost, I tried to find the road less travelled, but I felt doing so would mean I’m taking the road he also took. “Two roads diverged in a wood…” Well, what happens now that I’ve got three roads diverging in a wood? I took the road less travelled, yeah. I mean, I saw a fewer number of footprints on the soil here compared to the one on the other roads, so how did I end up back on the crossroads?
Wait a minute, maybe there was more than one roads less travelled. Maybe I couldn’t see the many footprints on the road I took because they were washed away by time or some forces far beyond our mundaness. Or maybe, I should have created my own road, ignoring the crossroads.
You said I could always call for help whenever I got to my break-point. You said you were always close by and all I needed to do was talk, n'est-ce pas? Well, I did. Right there on the road, battered and faithless, I called for help. I shouted and screamed till I went numb, but you didn’t come. I paused so I could hear something, anything at all, but all I could hear was my irregular heartbeat in the silence. Maybe, just like everyone else, you couldn’t hear me.
They say sound gets lost in space, so maybe I’ll need to fill this void before anyone can hear me. But now, I’m confused. What do I fill this emptiness with? I fear that when I let go of this silence, the noise will be unbearable. This is my curse – away from the noise into the silence, lost in the silence missing the noise, run from the silence back to the noise, unable to adjust, returns to the silence. Mon cercle de vie, folks.
“La balance!” I remember you telling me, “balance!”
“You stay too long in the noise, you lose your voice. You stay too long in the silence, and no one hears your voice.”
“But I don’t like the noise,” I said, “and I don’t care if no one hears my voice. Je m'en fiche!”
“Well, I want to hear your voice,” I remember you saying, “the world wants to.”
Sounds get lost in space. Space, vacuums, void, emptiness – I’ve learned to find peace in these things. But maybe now, I’ll learn to embrace the noise a bit. Not so I can ask for help , or so the world can hear my voice. If for anything, it’s just so I can say, “Thank you,” and so you’d hear it.
– Delight, #MondayLetters, ‘22.