December 19th, 2020
By: Notes A Solitary Corner
Tags: Loneliness, Gratitude, Covid Diaries, Silence

Dear S,

I have learned to hate the silence.

I was never fond of the evening. The darkness and stillness always felt enormous, and my loneliness within them, infinite. Throughout life, I kept it at bay through others. When I was young, my family, who provided a background hum of life against the encroaching night. Then my roommates and residence halls, where the world is never fully quiet and only occasionally slows. But once I moved out on my own, the evenings took back their space. Some more than others — if I am lucky, there will be tasks to distract me or voices in my neighbors’ yards to provide another point of life within this geometric plane. But most nights are like tonight, broken only by the whisper of the heat turning on or the muffled movement of water in the dishwasher. Mundane, soft, they make the silence wider still.

I have defended myself through the years with noise. Television, mostly, where I can live inside another’s fantasy until it’s time to go to bed, escaping both the silence and the reality of my solitude in a single movement. Sometimes music, which is both better and worse — sorrowful music builds sorrow, and singing alone is so painful, I must imagine my friends into the room. At least, though, it is my own fantasy.

And then came the Pandemic. Evenings that were lonely have turned into days, then weeks and months. My days became my new evenings, and my evenings, an expansive universe of nothingness I never desired to explore. A Spring and Summer I barely registered have fallen into the shortened days of Autumn and, soon, Winter. I realized the other day that I haven’t touched a single human being since October, when my father was here because of the move. In this year, I consider myself lucky it’s only been 11 weeks.

Christmas will be spent in the same silence. Of course, we’ll do what most families are planning and sit down together over Zoom for a meal on Christmas Eve, all of us scattered across this continent. It’s not as terrible and cold as it sounds — relative to this endless string of days, I suspect it will even feel intimate and joyful. But I envy you tonight, the family you come home to each day. The Christmas you will spend with them. The silence you don’t have to live within. I shouldn’t, of course, but it can’t be helped.

Despite my envy, I suspect from what you’ve said that you know some of this same loneliness well, that the silence of these evenings is not unfamiliar. And when I think of it, I wish we could share it together, that we could take each other’s solitude away over a cup of coffee and a conversation of broken languages and much laughter. Instead, go home and talk to your family for me. Embrace them, and let them take your silence away. It’s a gift to cherish, for all its challenges.

And me, I have taken my silence away by writing to you. Hearing these words in my head was a comfort, so I hope you don’t mind me addressing them to you. And as much as I’ve come to hate this space of loneliness I live in, I have also realized that there is something here to hold on to. This solitude I despise would be a respite to my colleague with the rambunctious toddler or my friend whose relationship with her husband is falling apart. My agony would be another’s treasure. In times like these, making peace with one’s circumstances is an act of gratitude and a means of survival. So I shall make peace with mine.

Stay healthy, my friend. I’m afraid that, whether you appreciate it or not, I will likely write again soon.

Yours,

A.