In my SL profile, I mention that I’m generally quiet except for a select few who basically get to hear my entire brain just dumped out into text and/or voice without a filter. Lately though I’ve been thinking that the parts of those friendships that often mean the most to me are the times when we’re just quiet together. Quiet pauses can make me nervous with some people. I wonder what they’re thinking or if I seem boring or aloof or uninteresting, so my mind races ahead to try to come up with things to keep the conversation going. It stresses me out, and I know it’s all in my own head anyway.

Having friends with whom I can just be quiet and never feel that stress is a blessing. Sometimes we’re in the same space but working on separate projects and we’ll break the silence to show off or to see what the other person thinks. Other times, we’re just IMing and one or the other of us will wander away because of something in real life grabbing our attention, and it’s not a big deal. The conversation just picks up again later. Sure we have our times where it’s rapid-fire chatting, but those times where it’s kindred spirits quietly taking up some virtual space together are special to me. Even with all the things we can do in SL, simply sharing the quiet with someone else and knowing I’m not alone is sometimes exactly what I need.

And somewhat related to that, there are also people with whom I rarely exchange IMs because we each assume that the other must be busy with a million other things, and yet those people are some of the very ones I’d miss the most if I stopped seeing their names pop up in my friends list. I enjoy the talks we do share, but the quiet times in between are fine too. We’re always able to pick back up again wherever we left off last. They get that struggle I have sometimes when I feel lonely but don’t feel like being social.

Thank you for the quiet times because they speak volumes about how important you are to me.

“Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.” –Margaret Lee Runbeck