Silence is vital and necessary

There's been an explosion of posts about introverts over the past few years, and this isn't really one of them.I hover somewhere between introvert and extrovert - in fact, on the Meyers-Briggs test, I've always scored 50-50 on the I/E portion, meaning that I literally am half introvert and half extrovert.I have a few people who can attest to both sides, if you need receipts.I remember back in my first job at The Miami Herald, I once told my editor, Pat, how I used to be really shy as a child. "You? With that mouth?" she asked, stunned.Yeah, with this mouth.Thing is, I can be loud and obnoxious and blunt and everything else. But I need quiet to recharge and regroup or else I go a little crazy.We share our Siberian Husky, Lumi, with my mother-in-law, and Lumi just went back home for the first time since mid-November. So when my husband left the house this morning to take the boys to the bus stop, the house was quiet in a way it hadn't been in months.As I went upstairs, I reveled in the silence. Often during the summer, I find myself alone at home and don't turn on the TV or radio or any other distraction. I don't talk to myself, and the sound is off on my computer. I sit in complete silence, and don't even notice that it goes on for hours sometimes.That silence allows my mind to regroup. I got some of that while I was walking Lumi for miles everyday - even though it wasn't complete silence, it was the white noise of living in a city. Once I got to the park, it was relatively quiet, especially in winter when there aren't as many birds (except for huge flocks of Canada geese recently - and I mean huge).When the house is silent, it seems odd, but I rarely feel as at home as I do in those moments.I lived on my own for several years before meeting my husband, and I often would sit and read in complete quiet. I need those moments sometimes to pull myself back together. Our house is loud. Everyone here is loud and everyone talks over everyone else at times. I need to turn the volume down sometimes to just let my mind settle and relax.Photo by Kristina Flour via Unsplash.