Present Over Perfect

from Peanuts, and how as Charles Schultz drew him, he was
always surrounded by a cloud of dirt and swirling dust. I
think that’s how I’ve lived for a long time without knowing
it. I thought that the noise and the chaos and the busyness
were always somehow finding me, but I couldn’t figure out
how. What are the chances, I thought? Isn’t this funny?
But over time I started to realize that I’m like one of
those girls who can’t figure out why drama always finds her.
She swears up and down she has nothing to do with it. But
then you watch her trash-talk one girl and flirt with another
girl’s boyfriend, and you realize that even if she doesn’t see
it, the drama is all her.
The chaos is all me, as much as I don’t want to admit it. I
create it, am drawn to it, kick it up when things get too
quiet, because when I’m quiet I have to own up to the fact
that quiet terrifies me, that all my life I’ve been wrapping
myself in noise and chaos the way Pigpen is all wrapped up
in dust and dirt. And that noise protects me from feeling all
the things I don’t want to feel.
Here I am, though—the only sound, the waves breaking
on the shore and the intermittent rolls of thunder, nearer and
nearer. Here I am, though—all alone, just words and a dark
sky, hours set aside, blank pages.
And here’s what’s crazy: I was so afraid that if I faced
the silence I would find that inside myself, there’s simply
nothing, that I’m hollow like a set of Russian dolls missing
the center doll, all shells and no core. Or I thought that what
I would find in the silence is weak, crumbling, unable to