I spent years avoiding silence.
Not because I hated quiet. But because quiet meant I had nothing to fill it with—no words, no hope, no excuses. It meant facing myself without anyone else’s shadow beside me.
After carrying messages I never sent, becoming someone I had been too willing to reshape, I thought I would never be ready for the emptiness left behind. Every song, every café, every street corner reminded me of what I had lost. The world felt loud, and yet, I was the one making the noise.
So I started small. I deleted old conversations. I removed reminders that kept me waiting. I paused the playlist I had curated for memories I no longer needed. And then, I just sat. With myself. In the quiet I had been running from.
At first, the silence felt like absence. Cold. Uninviting. It echoed, revealing every corner I had filled with longing, every expectation I had placed on someone else. I was afraid I would get lost in it.
But then, something shifted. The silence became not a void, but a room. A room that had always been mine, waiting for me to step inside. I noticed my breathing, my heartbeat, my thoughts—untamed, unedited, my own. I realized I had been carrying clutter, not just in my life, but in my mind. Fear, hope, longing—all stacked up until I couldn’t see myself clearly.
In that quiet, I began to speak to myself. Not the rehearsed, cautious voice I had used for someone else. Not the one that whispered apologies for things I hadn’t done. But the voice that simply existed. Raw. Honest. Free.
For the first time, I let the past be exactly that—the past. The person I had been for someone else stayed behind. The one I had carried for too long—the one shaped by absence, by waiting, by what could have been—was finally released.
And the silence stayed.
Not as punishment. Not as a reminder. But as space.
Space to breathe. Space to think. Space to become.
I didn’t need to fill it with memories, or songs, or words I had once imagined sending. I didn’t need to make it comfortable for anyone else.
The silence was mine. And I was finally enough.
Discover more from Tales of a Broken Heart
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
