Noisy enough that it is quiet

Or, what I need right now, always, but not forever?

I keep figuring things out about myself. I kind of wish I’d get done with this phase, but I also suspect it’s a thing we never stop doing. At least not if we keep prodding at ourselves, and I don’t plan to stop doing that ever again.

Today, I was at Zion National Park, hiking by myself with a few dozen strangers on the same trail. It was an out and back that ended at a river, and there was a bit of milling about, selfie-taking, and general human noise.

I took a selfie or two, a few pics of nature, and then I discovered a spot against a rock where the river narrowed and the water was rushing and I couldn’t hear any of the other people. And it settled something in me. I sat there for a a few minutes. I took a video.

I’ve known for a while that I like listening to music loud, that I like disappearing into books, that I like being able to, not turn my brain off, but maybe help it to focus on one thing.

I think I like the quiet of noise. I think a live concert gives me that. A white noise machine. A rushing river.

It’s a different experience than a night out with friends, where it’s loud but also a lot is going on. Conversations, and connections, and music, maybe dancing, maybe sitting, changing locations, drinks… When I’m tired, or when my social battery is drained, I can’t process the different noises I am expected to follow. At that point I get… anxious. Or at least, that’s what it looks like. I have fixed it by taking myself out of the situation, usually by going home.

Now, with this idea that noisy silences are something that appeals to me, I wonder if the two are related. When my social guardrails are weak or down, I need to… go away? Recharge? Focus by unfocusing? (Is this dissociation?)

In one instance recently, I felt the need to leave a noisy place after a long night out with friends and being on (dancing, laughing, connecting, it was fun, I’d just reached a limit) and when one asked me what was going on, I just said there was too much noise. She asked if I’d tried earplugs, and I told her that I had my Loops in my bag, but that I thought I was just going to go, and that’s what I did. I’ve wondered since then that if it was the noise, why didn’t I want to use the Loops?

And maybe this is why. Maybe what I needed wasn’t to lower the volume, because all the inputs were still going to be there, just quieter. What I needed was to “reset” in some sense. Maybe I could have reset by drowning everything out for a minute or five (or ten) with static. Instead, I left, and that helped, too.

I’m curious to try it next time.