Noisy Silence

She dimmed the lights, warmed her hands with her cup of cocoa and walked to her most comfortable couch in the house. She settled down, down into the low couch feeling as always, as if she was going into her sheltered cocoon. She sighed deeply and looked on the outside sensing a deep sense of gratitude for the momentary quietude everyone around acknowledged and left her with.

Her toes began to feel icy reminding her that she left her throw on the couch by the tv last night, she sighed again, this time irate that moments like these are never as perfect as her novels say they might be.

Placing her cocoa by the couch she runs to fetch her throw, she comes back to her couch hoping to begin anew. She settles down into her couch again and stretches her feet on the ottoman she'd come to love. She remembered the day her husband brought it in and the dread with which she looked at it. It was a complete mismatch to the decor of the house, it stood out like a sore toe, and each time she came in to her parlor she had to avert her eyes and learn the art of selective attention until the day she began to associate the ottoman with her love for her dearest she missed so deeply.

She pulled her mind away from her feet and her thoughts. Taking a sip of the steaming cocoa she burnt her tongue and groaned at her fate. Placing the cup far away from herself,as an act of revolt against spoilers like this, she accepted with consternation that her life was essentially rigged and that no amount of reading or watching idealistic movies can ever fix that.

With that acceptance, she finally began to unwind as well as she knew how. She felt the ache around the muscles of her shoulders and her back and wondered what these muscles were called. While making a mental note to google that, she silently scowled at her million different diversions and she brought herself back to the ache she was feeling, she tried to visualize the pain turn into vapor and suddenly remembered that her friend, the scientist, might ridicule her for visualizing pain as vapor but then she knew that it worked for her to visualize, fantasize and will her pain away. This time around she smiled at her thought and found comfort in the diversion as well. She thought about her friends.

Summoning memories to the fore has always been a bitter sweet process; for, along with heartfelt happiness also came the sense of loss she didn't care to think about just yet. Memories have this enormous ability to bring upon us reality checks we cant seem to handle and at the same time they are so deeply tainted by our feelings about events that we do recall. She wondered if we ever truly Know.

The susurrus of her mind never seemed to cease, she pleaded with her mind to stop and immediately plunged, helplessly, into it to ponder out loud if she was really free, if freedom was nothing but an illusion. Her thoughts ran wild, what was love, what of the loneliness that came creeping in every now and then, what of the future. She grew so knotted in her thoughts that her body seemed to knot along, her shoulders tightened and her toes froze despite the warm throw she covered herself with, her cocoa had become cold enough to gulp down.

Unable to appreciate the quiet on the outside she stood up, changed into her running shoes and decided instead to enjoy the warm day outside, hoping that running hard enough might silence her mind atleast this once.