When Silence Loses a Tooth

When I need courage, I imagine a blank sheet of paper. A huge one. Endless. And I stand there alone, on that infinity.

I try to clear away thoughts, emotions, memories, until there is only me and the quiet of the page. For a moment, that whiteness gives me freedom. As much as I can hold. As much as I allow myself to have.

And I tell myself: courage, courage.

I feel strong enough to fill that emptiness with anything: words, colors, ideas, stories, maybe even a whole human life. Maybe an entire world. Maybe a constellation. How far can thought go? How far can imagination go?

But the words I allowed myself to use did not turn into answers. They turned into questions. And now they circle around me, bothering me, confusing me, instead of leaving meaning on the blank page.

Courage, courage, I tell myself again. Be quiet.

But then the noise of real life comes rushing in: movement, hurry, pressure. A swarm of dark words. Children shouting, complaints, protests, decisions, power. Everything piles up over my small illusion of freedom.

And then, without any warning, my daughter pulls out a tooth and places it next to me. After that, she goes to wash off the blood.

And suddenly, everything changes.

That moment of silence becomes almost impossible to hold on to. I use all my strength just to keep the illusion alive. And I feel like I have done nothing. Like I could cry, or scream. I feel small, helpless, unimportant. I lose myself in the white emptiness just so no one can find me.

I look again at the blank page. Now there is a baby tooth resting on it, a small thing that has just lost the meaning it had until now.

I wanted to write about freedom. About this exercise I sometimes do when I am searching for ideas and trying to give myself the illusion of a space without limits. But I understood something else.

Maybe being broken does not mean finding meaning.

Maybe it means the exact moment when meaning breaks away from you.