A Safe Silence

Posted on May 14, 2005 in Activity Uncertainty

Do you go into yourself and just wander between the parietal bones? I do. I often do it when there are people surrounding me. I’m like Virginia Woolf in The Hours: I have two lives. Am I lucky? Living for years inside an untreated mood disorder, I can’t say. Others who share my condition often talk of “lost years” during which they could not mingle with the crowd. I do my best, but at other times I retreat into my skull.

There’s therapy to be done here. In some settings, it’s that I feel crowded. In others, it is that I end up sitting next to people who are talking to someone who is on the other side. I don’t believe in breaking in unless there is something I can add, which isn’t often. They might be talking about friends, sports, or amusement parks — I can’t say that I have the strength of knowledge even to banter. So I take a walk between the hemispheres. Is it social anxiety when I just can’t break into a conversation at a table? Should I say something about being left out? I prefer the safe silence.