I Wanted Peace. I Didn’t Realize It Would Be This Quiet.

I wanted peace.
I just didn’t realize peace was going to be this freaking quiet.

There was a time in my life when I got tired of certain conversations, like really tired!

The same complaints.
The same gossip.
The same stories about the same people doing the same things they had apparently been doing since 2007.

And listen, I’m not going to sit here pretending I have never participated in gossip. Please. I am human. Put me at the right table with a glass of wine and I have opinions.

But something changed.
I started noticing how I felt afterward.

Some conversations left me energized. I would come home thinking about an idea, something I wanted to do, somewhere I wanted to go, something I wanted to create.

Others left me feeling heavy.
Nothing terrible had happened. Nobody had done anything to me.
I had just spent two hours talking about everybody else’s life instead of actually living mine.

And eventually I got tired of it.

El Que No Aporta, Quita

There’s a saying in Spanish that I love:

El que no aporta, quita.

Basically, if something isn’t adding to your life, eventually it starts taking something from it.

Your time.
Your energy.
Your attention.
Your peace.

And I started becoming much more protective of those things.

Not in some crazy move... I am removing all negative people from my energetic field way.

God, that sounds exhausting too.

I simply stopped wanting to spend so much of my time in places, conversations and relationships that consistently left me feeling worse than when I arrived.

So little by little, I pulled away.
I spent more time at home.
I stopped saying yes just because someone asked.
I became much more comfortable not participating in things that no longer felt like me.

And for a while, it felt wonderful.
Peaceful.
Calm.

Exactly what I thought I wanted.

And then one day I realized...
Holy shit.
It’s really quiet in here.

Nobody Talks About This Part

I think this is one of those strange parts of midlife that we don’t talk about enough.

For most of our adult lives, there was almost no empty space.
Kids needed something.
Work needed something.
Our husbands needed something.
The house needed something.

There were practices and appointments and school events and birthday parties and family obligations and groceries and dinners and laundry and eighty-seven text messages about who was driving whom where.

We complained that we never had a minute to ourselves.
And then life changes.

The kids get older.
They drive themselves.
They get jobs.
They have their own plans.
They don’t need us in quite the same way.

Some friendships have changed.
Some relationships no longer fit.

And maybe somewhere along the way, we also decided that we didn’t want to keep participating in conversations and environments that drained us.

So suddenly...
There’s space.

The thing we begged for.

And sometimes we have absolutely no idea what to do with it.

Peace Can Feel a Lot Like Loneliness at First

I’ve been noticing this in my own life.

There are moments when I feel lonely.
And if I’m not paying attention, that loneliness can make me want to fill the space with anything.
Call someone I already know I don’t really enjoy spending time with anymore.
Say yes to something I don’t actually want to do.
Scroll.
Clean something that absolutely did not ask to be cleaned.
Open the pantry for the seventeenth time as though perhaps a new snack has materialized since the last inspection.

Anything to avoid the quiet.

And I’ve had to ask myself:
Am I actually missing that person, that place or that version of my life?

Or am I just uncomfortable with the empty space?

Those are two very different things.

Because boredom can make an old life look surprisingly attractive.
Loneliness can make us romanticize relationships we already knew weren’t right for us.

Silence can make noise feel like connection.
But noise and connection are not the same thing.

I Don’t Want to Go Back Just Because I Haven’t Built the Next Part Yet

This is probably the biggest realization for me.

I don’t want to return to things I consciously outgrew simply because I haven’t figured out what belongs in their place yet.
And maybe that is what this chapter requires.
Not immediately filling every opening.
Not panicking because the calendar looks different.
Not assuming that because fewer people are around, something has gone wrong.

Maybe there has to be a little space between what used to fill our lives and what will fill them next.

And that space can be uncomfortable.
Because now we have to ask questions we haven’t had much time to ask.

What do I actually enjoy?
Who do I want to spend time with now?
What kinds of conversations do I want more of?
What do I want to learn?
Where do I want to go?
What am I curious about?
What makes me lose track of time?

And maybe most importantly...

Who am I when nobody needs anything from me right this second?

That one will keep you busy for a while.

This Doesn’t Mean Every Conversation Needs to Be Deep

Also, just to be clear, I am not suggesting we all need to sit around drinking herbal tea discussing our five-year goals.

Absolutely not.

Sometimes I want to laugh about something completely ridiculous.
Sometimes I want to talk about shoes.
Sometimes I want someone to tell me the story that could have been a three-minute voice message but somehow takes forty-five minutes.

That’s life.

The difference, for me, is how I feel in the relationship overall.
Do I feel like myself?
Can we laugh?
Can we talk about what’s happening in the world and what’s happening in our lives?
Can we celebrate each other?
Can I talk about something I’m excited about without feeling like I need to make it smaller?
Can we talk about dreams and plans and things we still want to experience?
Can we disagree and still like each other?
Does the relationship have some life in it?

That’s what I want now.

Not perfect people.
Not permanently positive people.
God forbid.
Just relationships that actually feel like relationships instead of habits I’ve been maintaining for twenty years.

Maybe the Quiet Isn’t the Problem

I’m starting to think the quiet itself isn’t the problem.
Maybe I’m just learning how to live inside it.

For so long, my life was full because other people needed me.

Now I have an opportunity to build a life that is full because I choose what belongs in it.
That feels very different.
And I don’t think the answer is isolation either.
We need people.
I need people.
I want friendships and dinners and laughter and trips and stupid conversations and meaningful conversations and people I can call when life goes sideways.

I want community.

But I also don’t want to fill my life with people simply so that it doesn’t feel empty.

There has to be something between isolation and accepting every invitation just so I have somewhere to go.
Maybe this chapter is about learning that balance.
Protecting our peace without building walls around it.
Making space for new relationships without desperately searching for them.
Learning to enjoy our own company without convincing ourselves we don’t need anyone.

And trusting that an empty space doesn’t always mean something is missing.
Sometimes it just means something hasn’t arrived yet.

I’m Learning Not to Fill Every Space

This might be the part I’m working on most.

Letting a Tuesday afternoon simply be a Tuesday afternoon.
Letting the house be quiet.
Letting myself be bored occasionally without immediately deciding something has gone terribly wrong with my life.
Letting relationships change.
Letting old chapters stay closed even when I remember the good parts.
And becoming much more intentional about what—and who—I use to fill my time.

Because I spent a lot of years wanting more peace.
Now that I have some of it, maybe the answer isn’t to immediately cover it back up with noise.
Maybe I need to learn how to live here.
And maybe from this quieter place, I’ll be able to recognize the people, conversations, experiences and friendships that actually do add something to my life when they come along.

So I’m curious:

Have you ever outgrown people, habits or parts of your old life... only to realize you weren’t quite prepared for the space they left behind?
And what are you learning to put there instead?

Always with so much love,

GABY

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