It Was Your Silence That Gave Me All The Answers

Sometimes I wait for your response, your words…I have not learned that they never come, or that maybe they are offered to me in a different form, as absences, as voids that you do not fill with letters and sentences. Your silence bottles up what I do not want to hear, what I refuse to hear you say.

It is cowardly to let silence be the answer, but sometimes it is all we have left. I still have not learned to stop expecting things from you, to know that that void that you create is your answer; it is the message you want to send me.

I am not learning to decipher your silence

I cannot manage to interpret the silence that you leave upon opening the door. I can’t make sense of all those words that you do not say. I need you to use your words to give shape to all of that dense silence that you create each time you leave, each time you are silent.

Your silence creates a distance between you and me, an abyss that is impossible to cross, an inexplicable separation that I do not deserve, do not understand, and yet must accept. But your silence is a path that is divided into a thousand possibilities, and I can never know which is the one that fits your thoughts.

What I know about silence

Your silences are not always the same; there are variations that could go unnoticed. There are shy silences, in which you do not dare speak to me, but you look me in the eyes and your eyes speak to me.

There are ironic silences, when you glue your eyes on mine and smile without saying anything. There are absent-minded silences when I ask you something and you have not heard because you are far from here without meaning to be. And above all else, there are complicit silences, the kind that touches your soul with lips that do not speak a single word.

But this silence, the one that separates us right now, contains other things, things we have not dared to tell one another and that have created a deep space between what we have and what we want. And although I no longer expect anything, I still have my doubts about whether or not I have properly understood all of our silence.

My response to your silence

I can look for a thousand answers to your silence, but I can only answer you in one way: tell me what you are thinking, tell me what is worrying you, I am by your side to help you, to understand you; if you need a hug, I will give it to you. If you need a kiss, I will give you hundreds of them; and if you just want me to listen to you, I will do it. I only ask that you say what you want to say.

I can answer you in many ways, I can give you silence in exchange for your own, but I do not want to create an even greater space between you and me. I can keep trying to give shape to that silence of yours with words, or I can ignore it and keep talking to you without getting a response. I respect your silence, and I need you to respect my uncertainty, my need to know, to know your thoughts.

The answers that your silence gives me

If you leave without saying anything, your silence whispers to me that you do not want this anymore. If you do not answer my messages, your silence tells me that you do not care how I feel or what I think. If I ask you about your thoughts and you do not answer, your silence tells me that there is something that you want to hide from me.

Maybe the answers you want to give with your silence are not these ones; maybe they are different, but I cannot know them if you do not help me to understand what you are not telling me.

I barely remember the echo of your words; I do not hear them anymore. You move before me like a ghost, like someone that I do not recognize, and it is your silence that suggests what you are not able to tell me with your words.

And if you close the door behind you again, without saying a word, close it forever; do not come back, because it will be at that moment that I understand that you only wanted to tell me goodbye.