Borrowing Quiet

No arguments.
No announcements.

No catastrophe to point to and say, that’s why I feel like this.
Just the low, steady sound of the refrigerator cycling on and off, as if it has taken on the responsibility of breathing for the room. It does this whether I am paying attention or not. It does this whether I am okay.

I sit at the table longer than necessary, mug warming my palms even as the heat slowly abandons it. Steam fades first. It always does. I’ve noticed that about things that start warm—they never warn you before they aren’t anymore.

Outside, the light is pale and undecided. Not quite morning. Not quite afternoon. The kind of light that doesn’t demand productivity or optimism. The kind that seems to understand that some days are meant only to be lived through, not improved.

I used to believe silence meant peace. That quiet was the reward for endurance. Now I know better. Silence is not peace. Silence is a container. It holds whatever you bring into it.

Today, it holds memory.

It holds conversations that ended without conclusions. Rooms I left without saying goodbye. Versions of myself I thought I’d already outgrown, waiting patiently for me to stop pretending I had.

There was a time when I filled every quiet moment with noise. Music playing even when I didn’t want to listen. Conversations stretched past their natural end because I was afraid of what might surface if they stopped. The television humming in the background like a talisman against my own thoughts.

I thought if I stayed surrounded by sound, I wouldn’t hear the parts of myself knocking from the inside.

But they knocked anyway.

Grief doesn’t require silence to find you. It only prefers it.

It took me a long time to understand that healing isn’t loud. It doesn’t arrive with instructions or cinematic clarity. It doesn’t announce itself as better. Healing shows up quietly, almost suspiciously, like realizing one afternoon that you haven’t rehearsed your escape plan in weeks.

It shows up like sitting at a table and noticing you’re still here.
I think about the people who taught me how to stay.

Not the ones who told me everything would be fine. Not the ones who tried to explain my pain away with logic or positivity. But the ones who sat beside me and allowed the quiet to stretch without rushing to fill it.

The ones who understood that sometimes the most generous thing you can offer another person is your presence without commentary.

There was a night—one I don’t revisit often—when I admitted out loud that I was afraid I had no hope left. I expected reassurance. A speech. A list of reasons I should keep going.

Instead, they said, “Then borrow mine. I’m not using it all right now.”
At the time, I laughed. It felt too simple to be useful. Hope, I thought, was something you either had or you didn’t.

But hope, I’ve learned, is not a permanent possession. It’s a shared resource. It moves between people like warmth. Like light passed hand to hand when the power goes out and no one is sure how long the dark will last.

Some days, I borrow hope.

Today, I borrow quiet.

I let it sit with me. I let it speak without demanding that it heal me, fix me, or turn into something inspirational. I don’t ask it to be productive. I don’t ask it to justify itself.

I simply allow it.

There are still rooms inside me I don’t enter. Doors I leave closed—not out of fear, but out of respect. I no longer believe I owe every version of myself a full excavation.

Some things are allowed to rest.

Outside, a car passes. Somewhere, a life continues that has nothing to do with mine. This comforts me more than it probably should. The world does not pause for my processing. It keeps moving. And somehow, that makes staying feel less heavy.

I finish my coffee. It’s lukewarm now, but drinkable. I don’t read into that. Not everything needs to be a metaphor to be meaningful.
Before standing, I remain seated a moment longer than necessary. Not because I’m stuck—but because I can.

Because there was a time when I couldn’t sit still without panicking. A time when quiet felt like abandonment instead of shelter.

Now, it feels like permission.

That is the quiet victory.