The Silent Treatment

I realized recently that the only form of punishment I know how to inflict on people who deeply hurt or insult me is to just stop speaking to them. I'm not saying I do this often or that, really, there's anything wrong with refusing to waste your time on people who are, well, a waste of time (I'm writing this as my cat, Mr. Sanchez, unleashes his wrath on my only stuffed animal, Lyle the Crocodile, who seems innocent enough to me but also earned similar animosity from my dog in Benin. I guess some, when provoked, prefer the more direct biting approach, while others stick with the subtlety of the silent treatment). But when it unfortunately does happen, I always think, self-righteously, that cutting off communication altogether or curtly announcing that I "need a break" from the evil Lyle to my victimized Sanchez will be a huge sacrifice, directly in proportion to the wrong committed in the first place. And then they'll pay! Oh, how they'll pay!

Aside from the conceited notion at the root of this--that depriving someone of my presence in his or her life is the cruelest form of revenge imaginable--the problem with the silent treatment is that it really isn't hard for me at all. Beyond a week or two of (maybe) wistfully reorganizing my interpersonal communication habits, including subjecting my still-talked-to friends to a detailed analysis of the deceptively lovable stuffed animal's catalogue of outrageous crimes, I'm more or less smoothly off on a different track, perhaps informally holding interviews for the next offender or interviewing for someone else's version of that position myself. What's worse is that this out-of-sight, out-of-mind wiring is so entrenched in my brain that not only is it easy to drop people who I feel deserve it, but even those who I love, revere and admire--the ones who are the ingredients of all the good in me--sometimes end up on the receiving end of an accidental form of the silent treatment just because I'm bad at keeping in touch. Like the archetypal deadbeat dad, I'll try to make up for this by sending an inevitable apologetic email that in turn makes grandiose promises of letters or packages or even mythical phone calls that never materialize, which then embarrasses me so much that another season of silence commences. Luckily I've managed to make some friends who are similarly challenged in this respect, or who at least don't take it personally when I don't return calls or emails--who somehow don't view it as anything worth dropping me for. Thank goodness.

Which brings me to Benin. When I finished my service at the end of June, I was trying to figure out how I would go about counteracting this inherent inability to pick up the phone and say hello (there's gotta be a disorder I can blame this on! Can't we make one up like all the others that medically excuse human emotion these days?) so that I would remain in touch not only with people--the usual deal-breaker--but, worse, ones who don't have email access, who only speak my ever-atrophying French and the metaphorical common ground with whom I share is still, for the most part, back across the Atlantic. I knew that this would be entirely my responsibility and, after years of hearing about the wunderkind Cobly volunteers who did call and write once they got back to the US, I was also aware that I would not be able to easily fade into the mist with the other ingrate gorillas who had already set a precedent for leaving and never being heard from again. So when I actually did force myself to sit down and call (I admit, partly hoping the phones would be down), I was almost shocked by how great it was hearing my best friend Zita's voice again, hearing my own slipping oddly and effortlessly back into villageois French, and just laughing with her about how neither of us had found a husband yet. I didn't realize until that moment that I wasn't calling just for her sake, but for my own as well.

Maybe an experience like this doesn't merit a novel-length essay, but it is quite a feat for anyone suffering from what I may more accurately describe as the unique cowardice of people who have no trouble nonchalantly yelling "Smell ya later!" as we turn to go but can't bear to say the word "Goodbye." Being able to talk to my friend for the unspecified amount of time during which my calling card went from having 25 minutes to having seven was worth even the painful recognition--the fear of which is at the heart of all the unintentional silent treatments throughout my adult life--that there are people and places I am no longer a part of that I miss terribly. I hope it won't be long before I do it again.