I posted a few days ago about my own experiences with aphasia as a teen. The term author came up with, "The Quiet," resonates with me. My own experience was also quiet, but not as peaceful as hers.
My stroke was a thief of thought; language fell apart, washed away, leaving me unable to read, write, or even conceive of words. Talking was something beyond me, to the point that I didn't notice when people were moving their mouths while speaking.
For about 3 weeks after my stroke, it seemed everyone was giving me the silent treatment, and I was worried I'd done something terribly wrong to the point nobody would even talk to me, yet I couldn't put any words together to ask them why they were so angry with me. Somehow, I also sensed that something was terribly wrong with me, but I couldn't quite grasp what it was; any time I tried, it slipped through my fingers like fog.
Yet, it was still very quiet, and that left me much more focused on sensations and immediate experiences than before or after. Apparently, I would stare at a tree, or at the snow as it fell. Simply existing. Feeling connected to the world in a new way, part of it, instead of separate from it. Maybe this was ultimate mindfulness, but it didn't feel that way. When I practice mindfulness now, there's still a sense of I-ness that wasn't present back then. All there was existence and connection along with a vague unease, knowing something was wrong.
Much later, they told me I only spoke 5 words after the stroke, all of them so-called "automatic" words like yes, no, and what.
For...reasons...my parents never took me to see a doctor about it, so I had to relearn how to read, write, speak, and listen on my own. Without words, I had to figure out other ways of thinking that didn't involve an internal monologue. Within weeks, I was already building up a new way of thinking to allow myself to understand what was happening in a way that didn't involve language, yet was still expressive enough to describe my experiences internally just as well as language had allowed. To this day, my natural mode of thinking involves no monologue, no words, no images at all.
I do remember what it was like to think in words all the time when I was younger, an unending flow that had carved a deep canyon in my mental landscape. But now that river is little more than a nearly dried up trickle and the canyon lies empty...except when I put words together to communicate with others.
Word-ing is now a very intentional activity for me, laying words like bricks, together with the mortar of understanding to build my own Tower of Babel, translating back and forth between my new way of thinking and the words I need to communicate with others. I've been told I have a very deliberate way of speaking in person, as though I'm carefully choosing each word, and this is why.
I sometimes wonder what my life would be like now if I'd never had the stroke, never lost my language. I suppose I'll never know.