When the Quiet Finds Me

When the quiet settles in, it feels like someone has turned off the whole world and left me alone with the echo of my own thoughts. I sit there, backed up against a wall, replaying everything I thought I had figured out. It always starts the same way. A small question, a faint ache, the soft sting of something I still have not made peace with. And

suddenly I am wondering what happened to me. When did things start slipping through my hands. When did I start slipping from myself.

I do this thing where I take moments that were never meant to be holy and make them feel like entire stories. I romanticise nights with strangers just to convince myself that I am capable of feeling something real again. I pull people close knowing they are temporary. I kiss them like they matter and leave like they do not. I act like I do not care about love and then spit in its face when it tries to show up. And after all of it, after every burn I give myself, I sit there and wonder why I am so miserable.

I listen to songs to drown out the things I refuse to face. I let someone else’s voice carry the weight of my sadness because I am tired of hearing my own. I put on music hoping it will save me. Hoping the beat will shake something loose inside me. Hoping the lyrics will say the words I am too afraid to say. And for a while, it works. The noise takes over. The world becomes softer. My heart becomes easier to carry.

But as soon as the song ends, I am back to where I started. Same thoughts. Same emptiness. Same version of me who does not know what to do with all this wanting. I think the scary part is that I know exactly why I feel this way. I give too much of myself to people who give me their half truths. I confuse attention with affection. I avoid the people who make me feel safe and run straight toward the ones who make me question if I am even worth choosing.

And sometimes I pretend that I do not see it. Sometimes I pretend I am fine as long as I keep moving. As long as I keep laughing. As long as I keep the nights loud enough and the mornings busy enough. But you cannot outrun yourself. Not forever. Eventually the quiet finds you. It always does.

Maybe that is the lesson. Maybe life is telling me that healing does not happen in noise. Maybe the reason I feel this emptiness so sharply is because I have never given myself the same tenderness I give to people who barely know what to do with me. Maybe the universe is waiting for me to finally sit in the quiet without trying to escape it.

Because the truth is, I do not hate love. I just do not trust the way I chase it. I do not hate being alone. I just forget that being alone does not mean I am unworthy. And maybe I am allowed to outgrow the versions of me that craved chaos just to feel alive. Maybe I am allowed to want something gentler. Something real. Something that stays.

When the quiet finds me again, I hope I can look it in the eye. I hope I can tell it that I am trying. That I am learning. That I am still becoming someone who deserves the kind of peace I keep writing about.

And maybe one day, the quiet will not feel like a punishment.

Maybe it will finally feel like home.