The Beauty of Basking in Silence

My mother doesn’t like music that much. On long car rides, my family would often drive along the interstate in complete silence. With the wind wrapping around our SUV at 70 miles per hour, I would sit in the backseat lazily staring at the blur of trees that passed me by. 

Like many kids growing up, I couldn’t stand quiet settings. They bored me to no end. I’d rather be playing my Nintendo DSi with the music of Super Mario Bros blaring or watching Spongebob Squarepants.

My mother doesn’t like many things. Balloons. The color red. Dyed hair. Loud people. Until recently, I hadn’t realized those were the very things I grew to love. I was deprived of them my entire childhood which only meant one thing: When I had them, I had to make sure I protected them. 

Image courtesy: Pinterest

Initially, my obsessions with these things were an act of defiance. A prime example of the reactance theory, if you will. Yet, I later found that they went deeper than just fulfilling my short attention span.

I learned that I leaned into things that distracted me from my own life, while my mother faced the silence head-on. I used television as a way to place myself in a different world — one where silence never existed. A place where, no matter how hard I tried to remember, my troubles were always miles away. 

A scene in “Bohemian Rhapsody” describes this perfectly. After a large, lavish party in his mansion full of people who don’t care about him, Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) has a heart-to-heart conversation with a then stranger, Jim Hutton (Aaron McCusker). Mercury says his friends were a “distraction” from the “in-between moments” of life. “I find them intolerable,” he said. “All of the darkness you thought you left behind comes creeping back in.”

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The quietness that consumed me on car rides was rather “intolerable” as I thought of louder things. Instances that my 9-year-old brain couldn’t make sense of. Why were my parents getting divorced? Why does my brother live across the country? Things that my TV painted over while I watched it, only for the paint to chip and crack as soon as each episode ended. 

My mother’s hazel eyes, that pensively followed the road ahead, gave her a poignant look. Why turn the radio up if the noise in your head is already at full volume?

As you can tell, I was an introspective 9-year-old. I thought very deeply. Even now, 10 years later, I turn to music for a distraction. But I realized I can’t keep putting on my headphones every time life gets hard. 

Image courtesy: Pinterest

So, I faced the music. I drove long distances in complete silence, similar to how my mother would drive all those years ago. The road stretched endlessly in front of me as I passed countless dusty cow pastures and hazy cornfields. I began to really see the world before me, without having a soundtrack to stop me from thinking deeper. I found I’d repressed years of memories and pain all those times where I pressed play, when I could’ve been pressing pause.

It’s not a glamorous thing — getting better. In fact, it’s anything but. Getting up in the morning used to seem so daunting that I’d play music as soon as I woke up. But the funny thing about growth is that the louder things you use to fill your life aren’t very loud at all. These distractions seep into your mind slowly and quietly. You don’t consider how they can let you ignore your fears. Your apathy. Your complacency.

Since those long, silent drives of my childhood, I’ve found comfort in how rewarding it can be to look ahead rather than stare behind.

Strike out,

Writer: Autumn Johnstone

Editor: Naina Chauhan

Autumn Johnstone is a writer for Strike Magazine GNV. Most of their time is spent creating art, obsessing over 1970s fashion, and trying out new tasty lattes from nearby cafés. You can reach them on Instagram @mynameissntfall, or by email autumnbell2005@gmail.com

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