(Headphones On-Quiet-MILCK)
People keep asking if I’m okay.
Not because I look sad.
Because I don’t look busy being loud anymore.
There was a time when my mind felt like a courtroom with too many witnesses.
Every thought talking at once.
Every feeling demanding testimony.
I mistook that noise for depth.
Now there is one voice.
It doesn’t argue.
It watches.
It notices patterns instead of reacting to them.
Symbolism instead of stories.
What repeats. What dissolves. What never belonged to me in the first place.
Life isn’t about surviving some personal version of Dante’s inferno.
I’m not here to keep walking circles through fire just to prove I can withstand heat.
Suffering isn’t a rite of passage.
It’s just suffering.
I used to think meaning came from intensity.
From staying at tables long after the food had gone cold.
From letting anything in as long as it felt like something.
Now I understand the Last Supper differently.
Not as sacrifice.
As choice.
What you allow to sit with you.
What you consume.
What you let shape your body, your thoughts, your nervous system.
What you excuse.
What you remove.
Small talk feels like nails on a chalkboard now.
Not because I’m above it.
Because I can hear when words are being used to avoid truth.
Silence doesn’t scare me anymore.
It shows me what’s real.
People assume calm means I’ve lost something.
They think I’m depressed, detached, or hiding a collapse they expect any minute now.
I don’t correct them.
I’m not in trouble.
I’m not healing dramatically.
I’m not becoming anything new.
I’m just no longer negotiating with noise.
And for the first time, that feels like enough.
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