A Day of Silence

Written: Friday, 11 April 2014

Posted: Monday, 14 April 2014

There is something about silence that cannot be explained. In some ways, silence can contain within itself more power than words.

This morning, I woke up long before my alarm. On a typical day, immediately after awakening, I would jump out of bed and bring myself to a full state of consciousness by blasting music – usually Halestorm, 3 Days Grace, or sometimes P!nk – through my headphones while I select which men’s shirt I’m going to hide in my backpack until I get to school. How I am going to present myself once I’m outside of the house that hasn’t felt like a home in years, once I’m beyond the borders of the world where my orientation is a subject that we avoid like the plague for the sake of keeping the peace.

But this morning was different, because today is the Day of Silence. Instead of creating my usual musical escape to drown out my thoughts, I stayed in bed for awhile, gazing at the ceiling. In the semi-darkness, I allowed the silence to envelop me like a blanket. The stillness was calming, cleansing. I slowly rose, descended the stairs, and looked out my kitchen window to watch the sunrise.

The silence we are symbolizing today, however, is not so peaceful. The silence we symbolize is a prison that confines far too many members of the LGBTQ* community. It is a silence that enables anti-LGBT bullying to continue. It is a silence that both instills and results from fear and shame within the hearts of people who should not have to be afraid and ashamed to be the person they were born to be. It cuts deep holes in hearts, tears relationships apart and throws them to the ground like frayed scraps of fabric to be swept up and thrown into the trash, and too often steals away the lives of people who have so much to live for. Words hurt. Whoever said "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me," was obviously delusional and most likely straight. But sometimes silence hurts even more.

Our silence today reminds us of, and awakens those around us to, the deadly cloud of silence that looms over our heads, spreading its poison like carbon monoxide filling our lungs. Our silence today is sacred and unifying. It connects those who have broken their silence, those who still live in silence, those who are in the middle ground between silence and speaking out, and those who simply care to see those who are bound by silence be made free.

Our silence today is strong, beautiful, and perhaps an even more powerful tool than words to put an end to the silence that hurts many everyday.

DAYofSILENCE.org