Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

the seasonal blackout

I spent the last few months noticing a bit of a void. Usually, from September through December, the cultural noise gets pretty loud and my feeds are choked with a predictable parade of curated coordinated flannels, pumpkin patches, Christmas lights, airport selfies, and smiling family photos in front of the tree. But this year, as the season deepened, a specific pattern emerged where those things that usually dominate the space went completely dark into a kind of blackout.

I understood that silence immediately one afternoon because I had been living it and just came out the other side. For weeks, I lived in a chair or shuffled behind a walker. This wasn’t a “fall from grace”; it was something I didn’t ask for to correct a five-year error that should have never happened. I didn’t just stop posting; I stopped writing during that time because I didn’t know what to talk to people about. There wasn’t a “message,” I just had a lot of rage. I literally wanted to punch someone.

the zero-sum game of survival mode

I remember putting a sticker on my walker in a desperate attempt to “stay strong,” but the reality was a little different. I disliked being stuck in that chair and living room, and despised how getting across the room took ten times more energy than it should. In this last season my energy was a zero-sum game where I had to choose between getting to the kitchen for a glass of water or trying to post an update. I chose the water. I didn’t even have the energy to tell people how shitty it was, because explaining it felt like extra reps I physically couldn’t finish, so I retreated to the basement and went quiet. When you are locked in survival mode, the metabolic demand required just to exist is so high that you have nothing left over to explain the struggle.

The irony is that while I was sitting in my silence, I was looking at everyone else’s silence and filling in the blanks with my own insecurities. I convinced myself they were at a silent retreat in Bali, disconnected and enlightened, comparing my forced, miserable quiet to what I imagined was their peaceful, “above it all” quiet. I felt like the only loser in the room while everyone else was off-grid by choice.

the illusion of silence

Certainly, some silence is on purpose and people take deliberate vacations from the noise, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, we have to leave room for the possibility that the blackout is not always a victory; often, it’s just necessary survival mode tactics. It could be a marriage quietly dissolving behind the scenes. A diagnosis that erased their plans overnight. An injury that took more than just physical capacity. Or they could be just like me, stuck in a chair, mad at the world, choosing a glass of water.

This has nothing to do with an app. It’s more about the stark realization that everybody has dark seasons. Everyone goes through times when they don’t want to talk to anybody, they don’t want to ask for help, they don’t want to post status updates, and they don’t want to do anything. This applies to you just as much as it applies to me.

no map for the trenches

This life is brutal. There’s no map for a season deep in survival mode, where you are just trying to get through the next ten minutes. People don’t vanish because they’re trying to hide, but because they’re using every single token of energy just to stay afloat.

If you are in the quiet right now, stop filling in the blanks of other people’s silence with success stories. If you’re going through a tough time, stop comparing your reality. They might be on a beach, but they could just as easily be in the trenches just like you and me.

The goal during these times is not to be “inspiring”. The goal is to keep the light on. Sometimes we forget that others are fighting realities that are just as brutal as ours. However you have to survive this season is okay.

*smiles at you* You’re going to make it to the other side. I promise.

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