The Sound of Silence

After 15 hours of driving, three too many cups of McDonald’s coffee and one horrifying experience with a pit toilet just outside of Grafton, my mother, my self and all my stuff finally made it safely home. I have officially left Sydney. And in 17 days, I officially leave the country.
Despite all the hoopla that led up to my going overseas, leaving Sydney feels like the first step of many. For the last six months, I’ve felt like a sitting duck. I’ve been counting down the days till I leave like an excited child counts down to Christmas. This trip has been the bright, shining beacon of hope that has guided me through life’s putrid swamp. And now, it’s a mere 17 days away.
It’s strange being home. For the last 18 months, I’ve been living in a city which literally never sleeps. I can’t remember a night which hasn’t been interrupted with the screams of a siren speeding down ANZAC Parade or the grumbles of the gutter cleaners as they sweep the leaves and litter and cigarette butts out of Sydney’s streets. At first, those sounds kept me awake for hours. Now, my nights are empty without them.

My parents’ place may as well be in a different world, let alone a different state. Garbage trucks and the loud whir of air-conditioning fans have been replaced by bird calls and the stop-start sound of a postman’s motorbike. You can actually hear the wind.
And nighttime is worse. There is nothing but silence. A silence so deafening, it keeps me awake. There are no gutter cleaners or wailing sirens or the faint conversation of the tenants who live upstairs. Just silence – thick, empty silence.

Lying awake last night listening for the sound of anything – cars, dogs, an axe-wielding murderer coming to slice me in my insomnia – I realized this was what I had been craving for the last six months, to be free of all the loud, stressful sound in my life. The sound of every minute ticking by in which I wasn’t making money, the sound of people telling me ‘No’ or worse, the empty sound of people telling me nothing at all. The sound of my computer loading my email account and the sound of the sigh which escaped me when I saw the inbox was still empty.
Finally, after months and months of sound, there is nothing but silence.
As I lay in bed, I realised my moving out of Sydney and my making the first step towards my trip, means I no longer have to be defined by those sounds. Instead, they have been replaced with silence. A silence which means I have nothing and no one to answer to, no responsibilities, no stress to be preoccupied over. A silence which can only be filled with one thing – my thoughts.
And they are unwaveringly, unabashedly, 100 percent obsessed with what will happen in 17 days.

Ciao for now. xo