Naturally,

I’m in the library (I’m a university student), and naturally since I’ve moved here I have found myself in the same position as I usually do lately. I’m sitting across from another person…well, more like I’m on one table, and he’s on another, but still the same principle. Now, for every person who has ever been two weeks into a new place you know the struggle to make friends. Just one friend. Literally. Just one.

It’s something that I’ve been struggling with since I got to this area, and it is unnecessarily difficult to do so. I keep wondering if its me (it probably is), or if I’m just destined to be a loner (please no). I have a hard time approaching people in general, and its a wonder that I even got through high school with the two people I did spend all my free time with. I’m an introvert by nature, but that doesn’t mean that I want to be alone all the time, as many of you other introverts know. I have spent the past 8 months in my home, in my room to be exact, recharging after a rough year of study. Don’t even judge me, I was exhausted back then. Based off of that reality, I’m starting to think that I lost all of my ability to introduce myself to anyone at all. It took me one week before I could voice my presence in my seminar groups, only because we are graded for participation and a girl is not about to lose 10% of her grade in three subjects because she won’t open her mouth. Shy or not, I’m not throwing away any credit.

Back to my present situation, I’m sitting alone at this table typing away for this post and stealing quick glances at the boy sitting very near to me, but yet seemingly very far away in some other world. I just want to say hello- I just want some human interaction- yet, here I still sit typing away on my laptop about how I need human interaction. It is me.

I don’t even have a book to read, and that would’ve at least kept me engaged in a reality that wasn’t one where I just gazed at another person who could potentially be my first acquaintance and, ultimately, my first friend here.

In the time that I took to type this out, he moved to another table closer to a charging port. And that ladies and gentleman, is another repeatedly missed opportunity.

I have no idea what I’m doing…

and I’m not sure if I should continue to roll with it like I have been or forsake everything and become a 40 year old  who lives with my parents. If I screw up my life like this (again- not my fault really) then what in the world will I do? I’m not going to divulge the deep and dark secrets of my misfortunes, but what now?

Once upon a time there was a girl. She was a fairly decent human being really, not too arrogant and not mean- in her own eyes at the very least. She knew she wasn’t a bad person because she had been told as much by friends and family, but that really doesn’t matter in the world when it comes to how life plays out so she found. She was a planner- a really, really good one- who knew how to plan things out so far ahead of time that she often saved herself all the trouble in the world. She was the kind of person who could just arrive and not have to panic because she’d have made a plan for that day months in advance. But then, life isn’t always going to go according to the plan. She knows this. It’s frustrating (she’s cried tears of frustration), annoying, angering, I-don’t-know-what-I’m-feeling, and down right unfair!

Then she makes a rushed together plan B that doesn’t seem to want to come together either (why?!) leaving her to hope that it will somehow despite how panicked and slapped together everything is. This is the story of a girl who can be related to by a lot of people…she hopes, but that would also be bad… and ultimately, the story of a girl whose phrase for life is ‘Jesus take the wheel on this’ because she sure doesn’t have the strength or heart left to be able to carry any weight, even if it is her own, at this point.

Fun story right? Shall we call the Grimm Brothers?

But really; why nothing seems to ever want to play out the way your 3 month-long plan envisioned is beyond me! I should probably end this off with something inspirational about how it will work out, or that everything falls where its meant to.

No.

I don’t mean that it won’t, but I haven’t reached that point yet and I’m seriously praying to reach a stopping point on the road I’m now travelling where the light is just a little sharper and clearer than it was in the past few weeks.

Id say I’m desperate but my mother never taught me to show the enemy that he’s gotten to me. I’m going to smile as I fight the waves, and have to believe that eventually instead of trying to DROWN ME they’ll start letting me ride them.

Silence.

The common misconception is that when one is silent one has nothing of significance to say, and thus becomes insignificant to the matter. While there is some truth in that statement, has anyone ever thought that maybe silence in itself says more than any Oxford dictionary approved words you could think of? If I could count the number of times my presence has been over looked because I was not the first person to give an answer to a seemingly easy problem, I could probably afford not to use WordPress for free.

It fascinates me how my silence is judged as unintelligence before I’ve even been given the chance to put my foot in my mouth in one of those ‘oh so common’ moments that occur when we ‘space out’. I understand that it is important to be able to speak up, but I’m also not going to be the next Wendy Williams of the world and I am perfectly okay with that and I think for the sanity of… whoever, others should be too.

My silence could mean any one of the following things among others:

I am thinking (as one should)

I am day dreaming (this is debatable)

I am emotional (... I mean this is true right? Ladies? Men? Strong, silent types?)

I am extremely angry and trying not to say the wrong thing (recommended)

I have nothing to say (life)

I am contemplating exactly what I have to publish to stand up there with Stephanie Meyer (yes, I like the Saga), Suzanne Collins (because we cannot forget Finnick Odair), John Green (because we all have a love/hate but mostly love relationship with the man who killed Augustus Waters), John Grisham (pick up one of his books and tell me you won’t read another- I dare you to lie to me), among the other great authors…

It is also possible to dumfound me into silence but that’s another story. I also talk to myself but that’s healthy…

I mean it is right?

In any case, I would hope that silence in itself is appreciated. The world today is a ball of mass chaos and loud sounding arguments about clashing ideologies. Everyone has something to say and only few manage not to say just anything that comes to mind without considering the effects of their words.

Did you also know that what you say cannot be taken back ( Saying that you take it back doesn’t count) and more often than not has the power to affect you and those around you? I truly believe that the power of life and death lies within that unattractive, but useful pink muscle in your mouth. You usually shape the outcome of what’s going to happen before you even realise what you’ve done. Try it: wake up and just say positive things about your day and see what happens. Alternatively, you could wake up and curse your day to hell and back and see what happens, but that one is on you. I recommend blessing yourself with your uttered declarations, but that’s just me. That’s why when you’re a child you are taught that if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all.

While I view silence as a good thing, I’m not naive enough to believe that it does not have negative attributes. When one does not confess a wrong doing on their or a witnessed fault, that is a problem. If you have ever heard the term ‘Buying [his/her/your/my] silence’, more often than not it is a bad thing and I recommend not being anywhere near whoever you heard say it. Nine times out of ten, don’t do it kids.

Furthermore, silence can be the result of hurt and contained emotions which is unhealthy. I’m not saying you have to air out everything in your heart as though the world is your diary (it is not, neither is social media *cough*) but bottling it all in is one sure way of leading to self explosion and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

There is power in silence and I think that’s what makes it fragile. Not in that it can be broken, but in that no one knows what exactly it contains before it is broken and assumptions should, therefore, not be made.

Like many posts to come, this is just one draft of my many thoughts that make up the story of ‘My Thoughts’. I hope you enjoy insight into my silence. I’ll have you know I wrote this piece with only the company of my inner voice. Normal right?