I wanna see you be brave.

I have been struggling with this overwhelming sense of depression for far too long this summer. First, I was sinking into depression because even with the excitement of a new, full-time job (and the pride over having been hired on the spot, not twelve hours after I had emailed them my résumé), England felt so far away. Then, I sank even further because I was trying to cram so much social time in because I knew I was leaving, and that ended up causing more stress because I was trying to work 40 hours a week and maintain social time, which usually happened in the middle of my work day. And now, as I sit here typing this, I am at a low (though thankfully not an all-time low) because now England is within my grasp, and everything else is fading away.

I guess it's grand to have a big dream and kind of terrifying when it actually comes true. Edmund Burke, in A Philosophical Enquiry, talks about the sublime. In the book, he says that anything vast and unmeasurable (like the universe, for instance) and unknown is terrifying, and in that terror, we get a glimpse of the sublime. Things that are measurable are simply beautiful, because we know how they function. We can take them apart and dissect them, and the mystery disappears. But those things that are full of mystery and take our breath away are sublime. I love that word. This trip is something I have wanted for a long time. But there is so much uncertainty, so much unknown, that the good is often overshadowed by the terrifying, and it's hard to reconcile in my head.

I struggle with silence. Silence is one of those things that is part of the sublime. In silence, my brain begins to wander and process, begins to truly think about what's about to happen. In silence, you unlock the secrets of your mind. But speak, and you've shattered the silence. Speak, and the spell is broken. People often say that life isn't measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away. While I don't always agree with that sentiment, I have found that when my breath is taken away, either because I'm stunned with happiness or paralysed with fear, I have seen a tiny glimpse of the sublime. I believe that stress occurs when we reach for the sublime and settle for the mediocre, when we yearn for the unknown and fall back to the known, and when we dream of the impossible and are struck down to the realm of the real. But silence is so key to understanding. Scientific studies show that the brain needs down time to de-stress, to process, to discard old memories and create new ones. Without this valuable down time, humans are unable to distinguish between good decisions and poor decisions based on prior experience. We are unable to process experiences we have had, in order to move forward with our lives. We become stuck in a situation where we become overwhelmed and overloaded.

And while I hate silence for making me process things like grief and stress and heartache, I realise that silence is the best (maybe only?) way to really recover. Silence is solitude but it can also be solace, which is hard to keep in mind when I'm so terrified of being alone.