looking for stillness

The door behind me closes with a resounding click. It’s red, and thick, and despite it’s sturdiness I can still hear my aunt singing loudly from inside. It’s much colder outside, but it’s quiet.

The snow is falling silently. Not a thick blanket, like we might get later in the season, but small flakes instead. The kind that you can only see when you look at it’s reflection under a streetlamp. The kind that won’t stay overnight but will stay long enough for you to fall asleep. The kind that makes family stay later in hopes of it letting up for the drive home.

One thing I’ve always loved about the snow is that it doesn’t matter how much there is— when it’s falling, it’s quiet. I think I read something once about how precipitation distorts sound and absorbs a portion of noise that would otherwise be travelling to us. I like that thought. The idea that rain, or snow, or fog, is taking some of our noise. Offering us a reprieve we didn’t know we needed. A reprieve I get to bask in now.

I let out a deep sigh, and watch as my breath floats through the air. My thin sweater and jeans aren’t doing much to keep me warm. I entertain the idea of going inside to grab a jacket, but the drunken laughter coming from the house is enough of a deterrent. I won’t be out here long anyways. Just long enough to breathe.

When I focus, I realize I’m not alone on the front steps. Sitting less than a foot away from me is the outline of a body. Black sweater, hood pulled up, breath and smoke cascading from the front of them. I know who it is before they say anything. They probably know who I am before I do, too.

Mike has always been quiet. I don’t know if it’s just around our family— that’s the only time I’ve ever seen him— or if it’s just who he is, but this isn’t the first time we’ve found each other looking for reprieve. That’s my way of saying I’m not surprised to see him here, and I’m even less surprised that it looks like he’s been out here for a while.

“Mind if I sit?” I ask. The stairway isn’t very big, probably four feet across, not including the railings. I don’t want to sit so we’re shoulder to shoulder, but I want to be standing even less. He gestures his hand to the spot beside him while exhaling another drag. I sit.

He offers me a smoke, something he rolled himself, with shaking hands. Whether it’s from the family or the cold I can’t tell. I take a long drag and offer it back.

“It’s yours. I’ve had too many as it is.” His voice is husky when he speaks. He must’ve been out here a while, then, if he’s been smoking enough to sound like that. I shrug and take another breath in.

We don’t talk for a long while. The snow continues to fall, and we continue to watch it under the streetlamp. If I’m honest, though, I’m not paying much attention. My mind is caught elsewhere, as it usually is, and it’s making me inhale more of the cigarette than the air around me. I wonder if Mike’s been doing the same. If that’s why he sounds like he’s smoked a pack since he’s been here.

The nicotine is making me warm, and I collapse in on myself.

“How long have you been out here?” My question doesn’t surprise me, but the fact that I started a conversation at all has. As many times as we’ve found ourselves in the same pocket of quiet at family events, it’s almost an unspoken agreement never to acknowledge each other. We’re both quiet, and our family is not. Needing space is an understanding that nobody in the house can give us, so we give it to each other. Maybe the snow is making me bold. Maybe my life is making me selfish. I finish my smoke. “You don’t have to answer, if you don’t want to.” I tack on after a considerable silence. It doesn’t make much difference to me if he answers, anyways.

“Long enough, I think.” His answer is quiet, and cryptic, and I think we’re both out here for the same reason. My body itches for another cigarette, something to occupy my hands so I’m not just picking at the skin around my nails. I look over at him, and he’s still; only watching the consistent fall of snow in front of us. I want to ask him if he’s thinking what I’m thinking. I want to ask him if we’re going through the same thing. I turn my head forward instead and start watching the cold seep into the ground.

Sometimes, when I’m like this, I think about taking a knife and stabbing it through my forearm. I’ll be sitting in a situation where everything around me is still, and quiet, and serene. I’ll be in the middle of a scene that artists dream of, and poets spend their lives trying to describe, and all I’m thinking of is tearing my flesh from my body. There’s a restlessness in me that I can only feel in the quietest moments. I hope it’s boredom, or too much sugar. On my best days I think it’s ambition— screaming at me to find an outlet, to find some passion in my life. On my worst days, I think it’s who I really am. Someone who’s destructive. Someone who wants to hurt themselves and others. Someone who, if spent too long in the quiet, will burn it all down. Beside me, Mike is still, and I hate him for it.

I’m about to ask if he has another cigarette, but before I can he rests his elbows on his knees and lets out a long breath. We watch as it escapes in the snow fall.

“I think,” he starts, “that it’s loud in there. And there are too many people— and mom is drunk again, which is always fucking annoying. And I wanted to come out here where it’s quiet and see how the snow absorbs some of the noise. But it’s loud out here, too. It’s so fucking loud.”

So, we are going through the same thing. Thinking the same thing. I don’t know if it’s just us, or a family curse, but I feel some weight lift from me all the same. Trying to find solace in the quiet, I guess. Trying to find company in stillness.

I think my nail is bleeding, I’m picking at it so hard. If it wasn’t so dark, I’d watch as the blood drips onto the snow under my feet. I took a writing class, once, that talked about saying more by saying less. Describe the colour contrast of red on white. Describe the heat of the blood melting the cold of the snow. Talk less, show less, don’t spoon feed. But right now, it’s too dark to see, and instead the blood is just falling. I look over at Mike and see him chewing his lip. I turn back to the street.

“Sometimes I think about ripping the muscles out of my body until I’m just a pile of flesh and bones.” I say to no one.

I don't say anything else. He sits silently beside me. We watch a car drive by, slipping slightly on the ice under it. A moment passes.

“Me too.” He says.

It’s so quiet out here, I can feel the noise running through my veins. The worst part of it is that it’s not always like this. Sometimes, the silence fills me, and I can breathe. Sometimes, it’s more than I’ve ever felt. I wish for nothing more than in this moment, being able to hear the snow fall. I want to watch it and see it, and not be thinking of the heaviness in my chest, or the regrets in my phone. I want to be enough by myself.

I can feel my heat radiating to Mike next to me. I wonder if he can feel it too.

“Do you think we’ll get better?” I don’t know why I ask him this. Maybe I’m looking for some kind of reassurance, maybe I’m looking for confirmation that we can’t. Either way, whatever the answer is I know it’s not what I want to hear.

He puts his hands on his knees and starts to stand up. I feel a rush of emotion in me. Is it relief? Is it fear? I can never know if I crave to be alone, or if it’s the last thing I want. As always, though, it’s not my choice whether the other person stays. I put my bleeding finger in my mouth, and I look up at him. He looks at me.

“I don’t know if we’ll get better,” he says, and turns his head down the darkened street, “but I hope so.”

I close my eyes, and I hear the door open behind me. I can hear my mom laughing with my sister, my cousin playing with her kids, my dad bragging about his last golf game. Momentarily, the noise fills the street, bounding off the neighbors' houses, down the snow-laden street, into the darkness of the night.

“Merry Christmas, Trinity.” He says, and then the door clicks shut, and I can’t hear anything. I watch as my breath floats away in front of me, imagining it’s the smoke of one more cigarette. It’s quiet.

I’ll stay out here for a little while longer— watching the snow fall, listening to the silence, pretending I don’t want to claw at my skin.

Just a little bit longer.