“There are times when silence has the loudest voice.” -Leroy Brownlow

This past year, I have learned more than anything that silence is always an answer. Sometimes, silence comes after you interviewed for a job that you were certain that you would get. Sometimes, silence comes after you have been begging God to answer your long-awaited prayers. And sometimes, silence comes after you have met someone that you thought was different than all the ones before, but he proves you very wrong.

As someone who is obsessed with words and language, silence does not bode well for me. It is not something that I readily embrace. I like long conversations-not months of silence trying to figure out what went wrong. Especially, when it comes to relationships, it is hard to settle for silence. But most often, silence is the only answer that you get. It is still amazing to me that even as an adult, people choose silence over words in most occasions. If you do not want to see your friend, you can simply ignore their phone calls and pretend that you were “so busy” that you could not return their call. If you want to stop seeing someone romantically, you will do the “slow fizzle” and just stop contact completely. As much as we all seem to embrace this silence rather than a tough conversation, we all would much rather someone be open and honest with us instead of punching us in the gut with silence.

There have been rare occasions where I was okay with the silence and other times that it hurt me deeply. This year though, I want to try and break the silence and allow people the opportunity for those conversations that may not be so easy. And while some will still answer me in silence, those are the questions that I always knew the answer to, but this time I may not be around for the explanation.