Learning to Not Hate the Word “Quiet”

It is 3:00 A.M on January 10th, and I can not sleep. The pitch black of my room almost fools me into thinking my eyes are closed, but the stream of thoughts in my mind assures me otherwise. Today is the first night I return to the U.S. after my month-long stay in India. A month full of constant offers of food, colorful sights and clothing, and lots and lots of noise.

The night we arrived at my grandma’s place, a small house on the side of a busy street, I thought sleeping in such an environment would be impossible. Despite being indoors, the sounds of cars honking, motorcycles speeding on gravel, and people talking made it feel as if I picked up my mattress and blanket and situated myself for a long night's rest right in the middle of the street. And yet, somehow, I fell asleep. I fell asleep that night, the next night, and all twenty-eight nights later.

Now I am back in my room where it is so quiet, the sound of my air conditioning feels loud. Technically, based on my need for silence in order to sleep, I should be sound asleep within minutes. And yet, the quiet feels eerie. Despite the comfort of being back in my room, part of me aches to be back in my grandma’s place–to be back in the place where I hear cars honking, motorcycles speeding on gravel, and people talking.

My trip to India made me realize for the first time how quiet my life has been. I started tallying all the parts of my childhood and adolescence that have empty spaces where noise should be. I think of the Christmas mornings when I would wake with a longing for noise. For the sounds of wrapping paper tears, for holiday classics to play on the television screen, and for laughter to echo from the kitchen. Maybe it was a result of indoctrination from Christmas movies, but I had always believed the most magical Christmas mornings were the ones full of noise. I think of summers in my suburb, where I longed for the sound of life. The times I closed my eyes and imagined the steady hum of my ceiling fan was instead the whoosh of the New York City subway running over railroad tracks. The times I imagined the soap opera dialogue from the downstairs TV as chatter in a coffee shop and the silent streets of my neighborhood as sidewalks bustling with conversation.

Aside from quiet taking up much of the space in my life, it has taken shape as an adjective to describe me. From elementary to high school, I viewed the word quiet as a label, one that was assigned to me without my consent.

I think about all the times I have been called quiet. When in the middle of a game of mafia upon being accused of being the mafia, because I had not spoken yet, a classmate calls out, “Well, that’s just Riddhi; she’s always quiet!” I think of how, in eighth grade, my English teacher called me quiet on the first day of school– day one with a teacher I have never had before- she was so quick to come to this conclusion. I think of being called quiet at work, dance, house parties, and nearly every environment in my life, and the frustration I feel each time.

Every time I am branded with that word, a quick flash of defensiveness spikes in me. In those moments, a reel of me performing poetry in front of large crowds, answering questions in class, or even ranting for hours about TV show characters with my sister plays in my mind. Is that quiet? Will I ever be anything other than quiet?

I think about the letter Q. I think of feeling trapped in it as if all the parts of me are forced to fit in the confines of its shape. In the same way, U always follows Q; quiet always follows me.

If this personal essay were a novel, now would be the point where I reveal my sudden love for the word quiet. I would say how I find peace in quiet, how it's comforting, and how being called quiet is something I’ve grown fond of. But this is no novel.

I still want to live a life full of noise. I want R&B grooves to play in my headphones while walking to work on city streets. I want to hear doorbell rings at my place on Friday evenings, and I want to listen to the loud laughs of Saturday morning debriefs. I want to hear languages I can barely understand surround me as I take tacky tourist pictures. I want to hear the press of kisses on my forehead, neck, and shoulders. One day, I want to hear tiny feet padding on kitchen tiles and giggles from downstairs.

But maybe I’ll learn to savor the spaces in between in those moments. Maybe I’ll learn to float in the pockets of silence instead of drowning in them. Maybe I and the quiet will never be best friends, but we can learn to coexist.