There is an incredible thing about feeling alone in the crowd that I never quite fully understood, but that has conquered my heart many times. So often we were surrounded by numbers and yet, loneliness came about like there was nothing but silence. Perhaps it sounds like a sad thing to say or to experience, but it was like a feeling of dozing off or lifting from the ground and reaching some place which no one else was there. It was a peaceful loneliness.
Weird as it is and as it may sound, that was always a nice place to be. I mostly enjoy being around friends, gathering as many of them as we can, but places and situations were seldom neither as easy nor as comfortable as they should have been. And it wasn’t personal or targeted to anyone… it mostly came in a spur, unplanned, as if in a certain point of the conversation, the loudness and all the craziness they’re all doing and talking about simply did not existed anymore. I was no longer there. Strangest thing is that we were a constant center of attentions, either if in our group or among others we happened to meet. We filled the spot of the joker, the carer and the one who always had a funny thing to say. And y-e-s, we enjoyed that. Fact is that the more we had around us, the more we needed to go. Many times I caught myself sitting on my bed in the dark while the music still played outside and the guests danced on it, only to get a few moments up there. I reached out to this secret and private place where there was just a lot of us. Safety, comfort and a lot of ease are the things we encountered in it. Seconds were like centuries.
I can only hope that perhaps you understand by now that life hasn’t been so kind to us with the things that we could not choose. Once I heard from someone whom I really admire that the most important feeling a child must have while growing up isn’t love or tenderness… it is safety. Well, if you’ve kept yourself up to date and read the chapters of our story till here, I guess you have a good idea of how it happened for us. We were very unsafe growing up both before and after the walls topped with electric barbed wires that surrounded the house. There was violence in and outside. One could take you out of this world and rip your body apart while the other could destroy your heart and your mind in a way that blurred all roads to sanity. To me, they were both the same.
Fast forwarding to young adult years, I remember having to overcome a lot of crap I didn’t understand in order to get where I wanted to be. Yeah, well, I know we all do, but this isn’t the point now. Fact is that I often managed, somehow, and bystanders were amazed by it. Most didn’t know my whole story or were I came from, only that I popped up there from the coast. Some of them would come to me to open up about their own lives and ask for advice. I’ve always offered it with care and kindness and they were surprised with “how mature I was”. I reckon people looking at me and saying that I was lucky to have it all figured out, being strong, still managing to be happy and to laugh loudly at a party. Little they knew that there was a lot behind those laughs. Essentially, these were people who came from families that were publicly fucked up, shameless broken homes. Ours was just too far away for them to judge as well as too well behaved while visiting. Their mask was their most powerful weapon and they wore it well.
And so, in the middle of a party, a concert or even sitting by the bar table with friends on a Friday evening, laughing and having fun, I dozed off. Something else came into mind which absolutely was nothing at all. Everything around me turned silent and I couldn’t hear a thing anymore. Kinda like they show in the movies when someone is about to have an epiphany, if you know what I mean. My eyes fixed on something and my mind moving back and forth in a joyful emptiness. A safe place where we blocked the blend of bad things that our young heart has felt and our eyes have seen. In the middle of the chaos, we encountered the breath that kept us going.
Those seconds in stillness brought us our ease. There was safety in the silence and clear waters over the memories. We saw it all, we knew it all. We saw the wonders of silence while searching for the noise. At last, the balance of our blend made it perfect. And in the crowded loneliness, we found our peace.
