The Deafening Sound Of What’s Missing.
They sit across from me, and it’s hard to hear them. They’ve become so accustomed to it, so acclimated to the horrific roar that they don’t even notice it anymore.
It’s become their new normal, burned into their souls over a lifetime of day after day acquiescence to the small losses, the hurts and sadness, until they can’t remember what it felt like to live and breathe joy.
In spite of whatever problems they think they have, whatever particular wound of the day that they want to talk about, the truth is more terrible than they want to admit, or even have the perspective to see and hear.
Because when you’ve become accustomed to the sound of the warning siren, it no longer means anything to you anymore.
And the truth is, what you can’t hear can hurt you.
Because what I don’t see between them is affection, warmth, kindness and closeness. Their body language screams that these are two people, no longer one, who have at some point have drifted towards opposite edges of their particular highway, moving towards the same terminus without the simpatico required to make the journey worthwhile.
They both seem to want to find each other again, but they don’t seem to know how.
Being alive doesn’t mean that you’re living, it just means that you’re here. Breath without life, a terrible form of hell.
Neither of them seem to be hearing it though. They sit there, seemingly desperate to tell me why they are right and the other is wrong.
Surface concerns patching over the gaping hole at the core of them, trying to find a small sense of significance to stem the hurt they feel at the loss of the other. They’re both damaged, bleeding from their souls in a never ending hemorrhage of hope and happiness, love and laughter.
In truth, I think they both hear it, but they’re so afraid to talk about it, and that’s what’s killing them.
Because over the years, they’ve tried to pour kindness into each other, partially from a desire to not hurt a wounded soul that they love so deeply, and partially because they’ve always been taught that their needs didn’t matter.
From their words, I can tell that she feels like she has always been a secondary concern to him trying to deal with his trauma, and he feels like he is not longer loved and wanted because she is so scarred from hers.
It’s like a tango for two, based on loss, sadness, fear and longing.
And the soundtrack for this dance is the cascade of tears they cry silently, while each is desperate to hear the sound of what they need from the other.
I can see that each of them in their own way is trying, but their own wounds are drowning out that signals that they are trying to understand from each other. So they sit, together but apart, silent but screaming.
Trying to understand what they’ve lost, because they’re desperate to find it again.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings