The Storms and Silence

The storm came in without warning. One minute the sky was just gray and heavy, the kind of gray you barely notice when you’re busy, and the next minute it turned black. Rain slammed against the glass like it was trying to break in, wind rattled the frames, and thunder rolled so loud that it shook the floor beneath me.
I was in my apartment, alone, hunched over my laptop, pretending to work but mostly scrolling. Emails. News headlines. Random videos. My head was loud, my chest tight, and yet I didn’t stop. I just kept tapping and swiping as if more noise might drown out the weight I didn’t want to face.

Then everything cut out.

First the lights. Then the low hum of the fridge. The whirr of the fan. Even my laptop screen dimmed as the Wi-Fi went dead. For the first time in a long time, there was nothing but the storm outside and the sudden, unsettling silence inside.
At first, I panicked. It sounds ridiculous now, but I didn’t know what to do with silence. I felt restless. My hand reached instinctively for my phone, but the battery was low and there was no signal. I lit a candle, its small flame shaking every time the wind slammed against the window. The whole apartment looked different under that dim light, almost like a stranger’s home.

And with nothing to distract me, I heard myself.

Not my voice out loud, but the voice I had been ignoring for weeks. The one that whispered when I pushed myself past exhaustion, when I said yes to too many obligations, when I laughed at jokes that weren’t funny because I was too tired to explain. The voice that said: You’re not okay.
I hadn’t wanted to hear it. So I drowned it in scrolling, background music, podcasts, anything. But in that storm, with no noise to hide behind, it broke through.
At first, the silence felt unbearable. My thoughts raced. Deadlines I hadn’t met. Calls I had avoided. Messages I had read and never replied to. The silence was like a mirror I didn’t want to look into.

Then, something cracked.

I started crying. Not the neat, polite kind of tears you can wipe away quickly, but the heavy, messy sobs that shake your whole body. I cried for the exhaustion I had ignored, the loneliness I had brushed off, the dreams I had shelved because life felt too crowded.
The storm outside was wild, but for the first time, the storm inside me was louder—and I let it be.
I sat on the floor, hugging my knees, candlelight flickering against the walls, rain pounding like a drumbeat. And strangely, it felt like relief. Like my body had been begging me to let go, and I finally had.
After a while, I grabbed an old notebook I hadn’t touched in months. I wrote without editing, without worrying if the words made sense. Pages filled with frustration, memories, hopes I thought I had outgrown. By the time I put the pen down, I felt lighter, almost emptied out.
When the lights finally flickered back on hours later, I didn’t rush to reopen my laptop. I just sat there, surrounded by scribbled pages and candle wax, listening to the last quiet drips of rain against the window.
That storm didn’t take anything from me—it gave me something back. It forced me to stop. To sit in silence. To listen to the voice inside I had buried under the constant buzz of a world that never stops talking.
It’s strange. I used to think silence was uncomfortable. Now, I crave it. Since that night, I’ve made a habit of unplugging for a while each evening. No screens, no music, no background chatter. Just me and the quiet. Sometimes I journal, sometimes I just breathe, sometimes I cry again. And every time, I come out lighter.
The storm was chaotic, violent, even a little frightening. But in its darkness, I found something I had been missing all along: myself.

Lesson: Silence isn’t empty. It’s full of the truths we’ve been too busy, too afraid, or too distracted to hear.