The first fortnight of quiet was disorienting rather than nice

I noticed it first in the supermarket, of all places, standing in an aisle that had always been difficult and finding it was simply an aisle.

Replying to Bronte rather than to anybody above, because I want to answer what was actually asked.

The quiet was the thing I was least prepared for. I had spent thirty years with a background hum and had no idea it was not how everybody's head sounded.

Mine came back for a fortnight during a very stressful autumn and then went again, and I have learned not to read too much into a bad fortnight.

I would gently say that if the quiet has left you with a lot of unexpected feeling, that is very common here and it is worth saying out loud.

What surprised me most was how ordinary I felt. Not better exactly. Ordinary, in a way I had assumed was simply not available to me.

Reading and nodding. Nothing to add, and I wanted you to know somebody had read it.

What nobody told me is that it comes back sometimes, in patches, and that this is ordinary rather than a sign anything has stopped working.

I walked past a shop I had never once walked past in my adult life and stood outside it slightly stunned. That is my whole story about this.

Somebody asked me whether I miss it, which sounds like an absurd question and is not. There was a familiarity to it that I have had to let go of.

Saying it out loud helps other people say it too. Thank you.

What I would tell somebody experiencing this for the first time is that whatever it brings up is allowed, including the things that do not look like gratitude.

What was underneath the noise turned out to be the actual subject. Once it stopped I had to look at what it had been covering, and that took a year.

Coming back to what Bodhi wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

Coming back two years on to say the quiet held, that the adjustment was real, and that I would not go back to how my head sounded before.