The Silence Can Get Pretty Loud When You Live Alone

What do you do when it’s just too quiet?

When you live alone, it gets awful quiet. I know people who never turn off the TV or radio. Others have their Alexa or Siri devices playing music all day and sometimes all night because they can’t stand the silence.

When I’m working, I prefer a quiet setting. Background noise makes it harder to concentrate. In fact, I leave my hearing aids out because there’s nothing to hear, and the clocks tick too loudly. But when I’m done, on comes the music, news, a TV show, a podcast, or something on YouTube.

Today is a very quiet day. The elk visited earlier this morning, but they didn’t make any sounds that I could hear. It was so quiet while I was eating my breakfast, I could hear myself chew.

Donna Ward, an Australian author who never married or had children, talks about the silence in her wonderful book She I Dare Not Name: A Spinster’s Meditations on Life.

Ward has done her research, looking at never-married, never-mothering women like herself and how it is to be one of them. I don’t usually write in books, but I underlined and made notes all over this one because Ward has got it so right. She boldly explodes the silence that surrounds this topic. That does not mean she has conquered her own silence, which goes beyond just what we hear with our ears.  

p. 139: “. . . I’m talking about the silence that greets you when the sound of the key in the latch is the first sound the house has known since you left. I’m talking about when your face has been still for twenty-four or maybe forty-eight hours because no one has spoken to you, and you have barely spoken to yourself. I’m talking about how, after so much silence, the sound of your voice seems foreign, too boisterous for company . . . .

139-140: “And because this silence is so remarkable, you check your phone for a message, but there are only strings of photographs of friends at Sunday lunch with their families, or a stray note from a foreign prince with an incredible amount of money that must go into your bank account immediately. Deleting it, you check your email and find nothing. Then you go to the letterbox, where there is not even junk mail, and you notice all the cars in the street are gone, and all you can hear is the world rushing past, preoccupied and anxious to give money to strangers. I’m talking about that silence.”

Oh, yes. The other day, I walked out on my street, noticed all the neighbors’ cars gone, and realized I was alone. And it was silent. Then the neighbor’s rooster crowed. I laughed. At least I’ve got the chickens for company.

On a Sunday, Ward envisions what her family is doing, her mother, cousins, aunt and uncle, her friends waking up to do things with their partners and children. “That each was fond of me, there was no doubt. If they thought of me, they would pick up the phone, invite me to join them, or plan to drop by later. But I was not in their thoughts. On that Sunday morning, the sun on the pillow beside me, I let that truth soak in and I fell through the net.”

Ward goes on. “These days, as I write, people assume my life is like theirs.” Husband, children, grandchildren, aging parents . . .” When she tells them she’s alone, “I see them feel the chill of silence and move away.”

I could quote many more passages, but I hope you will read the book. If, like Ward, you are a lifelong single person, you might really relate to what she writes.

Meanwhile, let’s talk about the lack of sound. Right now in my house, it’s like this big white cloud of nothingness that fills every inch and pushes against the walls and ceilings. I have some Garth Brooks music ready to play when I finish writing, but at this moment, all I hear is the clicking of my computer keys.

Did you know there’s an official name for the fear of silence? It’s sedatephobia, an intense fear and panic related to the lack of noise. In a world filled with so much sound, people with this phobia get scared when everything is too quiet. The problem may be increasing because we are so used to having background noise that our brains are programmed to expect it.

There’s also the whole “calm before the storm” feeling that when it gets too quiet, something bad is about to happen. Maybe it’s natural to want to hear a little something.

Is that why so many stores and restaurants insist on playing loud music when it’s already so noisy it’s hard to hear each other talk?

Thesaurus.com offers some uplifting alternatives for “silence,” including peace, calm, hush, lull, and stillness. I find those words comforting. What words would you use for the complete lack of auditory input?

In trying to describe the silence, I have started a list:

·         It’s so quiet I startle when the ice maker drops ice cubes into the box.

·         It’s so quiet I jump when the phone rings, usually a telemarketer calling.

·         It’s so quiet I hear things that aren’t really there.

·         It’s so quiet the only noise is in my mind.

I’ll bet you can add to the list. It’s so quiet that . . .

Let’s talk about it. Is it too quiet where you live? Does it bother you? Do you keep some kind of sound going to counter the silence?

The AI-generated image above is “sound waves pouring out of a radio.” Terrible or kind of cool?

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How did I end up alone? I didn’t have any kids. After my husband and I retired to the Oregon coast, far from family, he died of Alzheimer’s. You can read our story in my forthcoming memoir, No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s, coming out on June 25, one month from today. You can preorder the book at your favorite bookseller. Visit https://www.suelick.com for information on all of my books.