The noise

Cancelling out the noise is a critical part of maintaining my own mental health.  It's never easy, and never often enough, but when I find a moment to cancel out the noise and centre my mind, it's bliss.

I live with a lot of noise.  Even though we now live in a small quiet town and I'm not subjected to hearing sirens and traffic all day long, I work, and therefore the constant hum of electricity in the house, the lights, the computer screens, the phone and the conference calls.  All this is book ended by the noise of harping at a two year old, and the nattering of a husband who is frustrated with diabetes, work, commuting, child rearing and often times with life in general.  It can be almost unavoidably impossible to cancel it out.  To hear silence, and revel in it.  I might be one of only a few rare people who greet a power outage with a smile.

My family has been hit rather hard this year by the Health Hammer.  That's right, I've given it a name.  It's lived with me long enough, it's like that rotten stray dog that came in one day and decided my furniture looked tasty enough to eat, but has never somehow left and moved on to someone else's home, someone else's sofa legs, or area carpet.  My daughter has caught every bug known to man this year and I think I've boasted once already that we have finally seen our first full month of preschool without a sick day.  That isn't to say we haven't continued to be hammered while she's been at school though.  The hubby has had a resurgence of bad blood sugars and his diabetes is officially out of control enough again to warrant insulin, which he laments at every. single. opportunity he has to speak about anything at all.  And then I've had my own lady issues that need not be spoken of, outside of which to say that I've been in agonizing pain, so much so that it's likely an undercurrent driver for some of the anxiety and depression I've been experiencing lately.  Combined with ailing mothers and grandmothers and holiday prep that is already in full swing despite the fact that Halloween hasn't even happened yet, geesh...stop the world, I want off some days.

So with all that, how do you cancel out the noise in your head to get the space you need to remember how to breathe?  Good question.  Just a few minutes ago, I covered my ears, very like a child would do when trying to shield herself from an extremely loud bang.  Where do you have to go to find silence?