This quotation can touch on two areas worth exploring: authority and silence. Your relationship with both of those concepts will connect to people from your past as well as your present. When I was young, one of the adults in my life, whom I loved very much, would often go silent. He would go for long periods of time without talking—literally a few days to a couple of weeks. I never knew what had caused this, but as is typical for a child I would assume I had done something wrong and try to fix it. Looking back after all these years, I imagine the silence had nothing to do with me at all. Fast forward through my life, and silence from authority figures was naturally difficult for me. When a supervisor or customer would stop communicating with me, or seem cold, I assumed I had done something wrong, even though I couldn’t imagine what. As I needed my job, this often led to me being quietly hysterical and doing everything I could to be the perfect employee.
