TE

Currently listening to the rosary on Hallow

There is something strangely nerve wrecking about silence and it’s not the absence of sound or the lack of someone to talk to. It’s the fact that most of us can’t sit still within ourselves. The real noise isn’t outside. It’s the chaos brewing and humming in our own heads (at least in my head). I recently told myself I was going to give up listening to music on my commute to work to practice being present and on day one…I evidently failed. Like i failed woefully. The silence felt too loud and too honest almost immediately.

It got me wondering why I couldn’t sit with my own thoughts for just fifteen minutes. You guys Fifteen!!! I always had to be listening to something – a podcast, an audio book, music or a youtube video. I’ve always needed some background noise even if I wasn’t conciously tuned in.

It’s so bad that the moment I get home from work, the first thing I do is pop on a YouTube video while I get unready. Sometimes it’s Lofi with fake fire‑crackling sounds, sometimes it’s the sound of rain, sometimes its the Beauty Behind the Madness by The Weeknd, sometimes it’s a random vlog I won’t remember five minutes later. There just had to be something playing — a soundtrack to distract me from myself as silence felt like an empty room I was not ready to enter.

It’s weird — sometimes instead of actually reading the Bible, I’ll play it on audio just so there’s something happening in the background. To be fair, it does help on mornings when I’m rushing out the door and haven’t said my prayers, or when I’m doing my chores and I need the rosary to keep me focused so I pray alongside it. But that’s not really the point.

I’m currently on a social media detox, which honestly isn’t hard for me because I don’t really have FOMO. I’m not obsessed with social media; if anything, I find it distracting. I think what I’m actually afraid of is getting dragged into things I don’t want to be part of all because I struggle to say no. So every now and then, I just delete all my apps or deactivate my account entirely. My friend hates this — she calls me a witch for disappearing without warning, and honestly… fair.

I think the real work is letting myself sit in silence by tuning out the external noise which, apparently, is something I’m not very good at. I’m scared of my own mind, and that’s not even me being dramatic. There’s an emptiness that creeps in when everything else goes quiet, a loneliness that suddenly grows a voice of its own. And when the world goes still, that voice gets loud. But silence… silence is slowly teaching me things I didn’t know I needed to learn.

It is teaching me that feeling everything is better than numbing everything. It’s teaching me that the thoughts I run from don’t disappear — they simply wait for me in the quiet, tapping their feet and unbothered, like, “Oh you’re back, we’ve been expecting you.”. Silence is becoming a mirror showing me the parts of myself I’ve avoided and keep avoiding, the emotions that I have postponed, the truths that I have tiptoed around and refused to accept.

Silence is slowly becoming a teacher. It’s reminding me that stillness isn’t a punishment like I imagined but rather an invitation which is strangely becoming a soft spot to land (a small patch of the world where I can finally hear myself without interruption). Honestly, maybe that’s the quiet magic and beauty of silence. It doesn’t rush nor demand. It simply waits for me to meet myself as it is not something I should fear but rather something to lean into. It is slowly becoming a place where my thoughts can settle, where my breath can become quiet, slow and filled with rhythm, a place my heart can rest. Silence is not in any way shape or form empty at all. It is full of answers that I’ve been too busy to hear in this chaotic and noisy world.

Maybe the art of being still isn’t about shutting out the world.
Maybe it’s about finally letting myself in.

This feels heavy lol. Anyway I’ll keep you updated.

See you in my next entry my loves. Until then, Stay Jiggy x.