Brain Silence

By Danielle Evans-Cole

Those nagging, spinning, twirling thoughts in your head that weave around in and out of your consciousness. Like an invasive weed sprouting up in your synapses twisting around them. 

The… 

Should you be worried about that new knocking sound in your car …

leads to the time your boyfriend’s car overheated on the turnpike with loud popping sounds ruining an otherwise perfect night in your tumultuous young teenage angsty relationship… 

that leads to your daughter now being the same exact age that you were when you first kissed that boyfriend foolishly, recklessly after he lied to you about breaking up with his girlfriend… 

leads to an old, sticky thread of regret about wasting years in that relationship…

All looping through your brain matter as you sit at a red light or chop vegetables for dinner. Deep inside your skull where it is black and dark and probably very slimy, but where you assume it is silent or should be silent. 

Is it silent inside your body apart from the pumping of your heart, the whisper of the breath in your lungs, or the gurgling in your intestines? 

Your brain is not silent, it is anything but silent. 

Go deep within yourself to that place of peace, that inner silent retreat. Put in ear plugs, cover your eyes with the lavender scented eye mask, deprive yourself of as many senses as you can to calm your mind, find that elusive silence that the disembodied voice on your meditation app talks about. 

Where is that silence for you? Your peace? Your retreat from everything – even yourself. 

Most especially yourself. 

How easy it is to find actual silence externally outside of your own body. Shut down those senses one by one. 

But shut down the chaotic, frenetic steady beating hum of your thoughts inside yourself? 

Sigh…. That is the sound your breath makes … and on the exhale for just a moment, no thoughts… just blank, black, floating. 

Floating?? 

It pops up in your mind with a building taste of anxiety…. 

You have had SWIMMING! on your to do list for weeks and once again failed to keep a promise to yourself…  you swore you would commit to dealing with your trauma in a more productive way once spring comes and you just saw your first robin so that is officially spring…. 

Instead, you keep stuffing down the tentacles of the scars of your childhood cuts and bruises with gooey chocolate chip cookies and late-night binges of a ridiculous dating reality show where people hide in pods….

FLOATING! 

Your anxiety hijacks the ticker tape of your brain once again remembering those serene looking floatation tanks you saw online, but your throat immediately felt tight and your breath constricted thinking of the snug cover lowering over your face…. 

And on and on and on…. 

The synapses fire, the chatter continues, the silence is ever elusive. 

Danielle Evans-Cole is a freelance writer and story cultivator based in the Boston area. She is the founder of Cultivated Storytelling™, LLC, a communications consulting, training, and story making business. She is an alumnus of Grub Street’s Writing to Heal Intensive. Her passion for creative nonfiction comes from the inspiration of listening to other writers. She will never stop being impressed by the brilliant writing of everyday people putting their hearts down on the page.  She uses gardening, yoga, and meditation to keep her sane while juggling the daily chaos of two teens, two cats, and one horse.