As a person who tends to have a compulsive need to speak and write, even if I spend a great deal of time in private reading and reflection in between the periods of creativity, I find it deeply troubling when people do not desire to speak with me. I understand, at least intellectually, that people may need a great deal of time to sort out what they want to say, or that they may need time to cool off if they feel trapped in an intolerable situation, but as someone who is an attentive and generally sympathetic listener to others, I find it distressing when people think so poorly of me that I cannot listen to them struggle to speak their mind of heart while treating their thoughts and feelings with respect, to the point where they feel it necessary to cut off all communication from me whatsoever.

Perhaps it should not trouble me so much, but it does. The sorts of matters I have to deal with are quite frankly too great to keep inside of me, and so I have to find a way of dealing with them. Being the sort of person who has to deal with things externally means that I greatly appreciate, and even need, people who are able to thoughtfully and actively listen to what I have to say or read what I have to write, and an comment encouragingly in reply. It does not offend me if people are too busy to chat often (I tend to be a fairly busy person myself, and I can understand that), or are limited by health or access to communication. It is only the deliberate desire not to communicate with me that I find so troubling and so offensive.

It is obvious that speech presents challenges when it comes to communication. This is even more true in writing when there is a difficulty in determining tone and an absence of body language to convey the mood of the writer. As someone who depends a great deal on written communication, difficulties in interpretation can be massive. What may not be as obvious is that silence presents its own challenges as well. The absence of communication between two parties allows each party to hear matters through their own fears and anxieties. In my case, there are fears of rejection, anxieties over whether someone who seemed like such a sympathetic and warm and tenderhearted person feels hatred or indifference towards me, whether the good times and conversations enjoyed have been forgotten or replaced with anger that time and concern were wasted in my direction. Certainly others have their own fears and anxieties, perhaps anxieties over not being appreciated, feeling as if they have been taken advantage of, or feeling as if keeping up a friendship or relationship with someone might not be worth all the stress it brings with other people. I’d like to think that I’m worth getting to know, worth overcoming the inevitable challenges, but not everyone appears to agree.

What I have found is that most of the prolonged and difficult silences of my life could have easily been overcome with thoughtful and honest speech. Assuming that two people genuinely have good feelings and good intentions, so long as two people are willing to listen, and know that the other person is not going to be a harsh judge, most problems can be understood and resolved. When a situation involves more than a couple of people matters become more complicated, but even here honest and open communication that preserves respect and shows concern for others will generally be enough to overcome most issues of miscommunication so that abrupt ruptures of relations between individuals ought not to be thought of as necessary. As someone whose commitment to openness and honesty is fairly extreme, it often saddens me when others do not feel so comfortable being open with me, but I have to remember that everyone faces their own fears and does the best that they can do just as I do the best that I know how to do.

I wish that I could say that it was merely one relationship that inspired this particular thought, but the truth is that there have been many relationships, often very deep ones, that have been marred by uncomfortable and lengthy periods of silence. Being someone who wishes everyone the best and someone who has worked very hard to avoid bitterness, it hurts that many people in my life whom I would wish to be close to find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to communicate with me. In cases where I have not behaved in a way that has been deliberately hurtful, often I find that there are concerns about openness, about my candor leading others to feel as if their private life and feelings are exposed to the whole world, or if it will inspire unwelcome rumor and gossip about them. Certainly this is a valid concern, but I think it is often unfair to lay this necessarily at my own hand. To be sure, there are people who will look for rumor and gossip wherever they can find it, and draw valid and invalid inferences from what someone like myself says, but being someone who does not know what lies inside the hearts and minds of others, I think it highly improper to make speculations about others. I desire that people tell me what they think and feel themselves, and consider my own writing to be coming from my own personal perspective, which I do not pretend to be the whole truth.

There is only so much that one can do about other people, but our openness and our desire to find friendship and intimacy with others involves us in the affairs of other people. By opening our heart to others, by telling them about our feelings, our worries, the ways that we feel hurt when others misunderstand us and behave rudely and harshly towards us, we are placing some sort of trust that these people will respond kindly and affectionately, especially if they have shown a willingness to do so in the past. It can be immensely troubling, and it is for me, when suddenly and without apparent provocation it seems as if these fond feelings have been replaced by harshness and rejection and bitter and angry silence, when no warning of danger was communicated. I suppose all I can do is wait as patiently as I can for others to sort out their own thoughts and feelings, overcome their own fears, and determine if it is worth the effort to keep open links with someone like myself. Friendship with me is an open door, but someone has to be willing to walk through it themselves, and they cannot be pushed.