It’s awfully quiet around here. Oh, there’s the noise of a mini bulldozer moving dirt at the neighbor’s house and a ridiculously loud motorcycle going by and a dog barking down the street. There’s the hum of the microwave running as my husband reheats his coffee and the dryer tumbling. I can create more sound by turning on a podcast on my phone or the radio or television, but those are not the sounds I miss.
I miss the peal of laughter echoing through a room full of people. The lively racket of kids passing in a hallway when I arrive to do a school visit. The whistles and applause when the actors come out to take their bows. The talking-over-each-other catching up we’d do when we laid out the food for our dinner club.
I miss most the sound of excitement in my own voice.
“Can you die of boredom?” I asked my husband the other day as I lay on the floor staring at the ceiling. “Because I’m pretty sure I might become the first documented case.” It’s not that I don’t have work to do or plenty of chores to keep me busy, but there’s only so much work and chores you can do before you start to go utterly stir crazy. I built a life full of distractions and now, thanks to the pandemic and my own fears, many of them are gone.
I’m told meditating helps, and I suppose it does. But right now, it just feels like more quietude.
