aversion

The resistance to silence, to quiet, was what she found most disturbing, most disorienting. A television set going in every room. The Dust Buster. Her lover seeking out every untended space—violating it, occupying it, filling it with words and meaning and movement. Consciously choosing to perpetuate fullness, to hold things in a swollen, bloated, distended state. Struggling against the natural tendency of things to fill and empty and fill and empty again. Against—and irrationally uncomfortable—with quiet, with hollowness, with the pulsing subtlety of it all. Always moving. Always doing. Always filling.

She was well into her forties before noticing what was driving her lover. To understand that it was not anger or impatience but fear. And then, ever so slowly, her blame and hatred started to soften, to sink into a profound sadness that, while inconsolable, was infinitely more human.