Where the Silence Waited for Me

It didn’t happen all at once.

There was no grand event.

Just a slow quieting.

A fading of noise—outside and inside.

The world kept moving,

but I started standing still.

At first, I thought it was loneliness.

That heavy kind

that hangs around your shoulders

and makes you forget what it feels like

to laugh without thinking.

But it wasn’t just loneliness.

It was silence—

and it was patient.

I tried to fill it.

With scrolling.

With background noise.

With people who didn’t listen

and conversations that never really started.

I’d turn the volume up so loud,

just to drown out the echo

of everything I didn’t want to feel.

But silence doesn’t fight for space.

It just waits.

And it waited for me.

It followed me

when I couldn’t follow myself.

There came a moment—

quiet, forgettable,

probably in the middle of brushing my teeth

or walking to nowhere—

where I realized

I hadn’t heard my own voice

in weeks.

Not the one I used in conversations,

but the one in my chest.

The honest one.

That voice was tired.

Tired of pretending.

Tired of apologizing for needing rest,

for caring too much,

for wanting to disappear sometimes

just to see if anyone would notice.

And there,

in that uncomfortable stillness,

I heard everything

I had been avoiding.

I heard the truth

about a friendship

that had slowly crumbled,

but I kept trying to hold up

with one-sided love.

I heard the grief

I never gave time to

because I thought I had to be

the strong one.

I heard the words

I should’ve said

to someone

before they walked away—

but I let pride speak louder than heart.

And I cried.

Not the beautiful kind,

not cinematic tears in a window-lit room.

Just messy, tired crying—

the kind that leaves you emptier

but also lighter.

It was in that raw moment

that silence stopped feeling like a threat.

It became something else.

Not a void,

but a space—

a space where I could exist

without performing,

without explaining.

I didn’t need to fix anything that day.

I didn’t figure it all out.

But I did make one quiet promise to myself:

To stop running

every time the silence comes.

Now,

I sit with it.

Not always.

Not perfectly.

But sometimes,

when the noise fades,

I meet myself there.

And I listen.

Thanks For Reading 💕💕💕