It is quiet

and it is loud

I had a conversation with a friend today.
We were feeling the same thing. No shocker there; to be honest, I am usually on the same wavelength as my friends.

We spoke about this quiet we have both been sitting in lately.

But it is not really quiet.

It feels like the sound around us has been softened, like someone turned the volume down on the world but not all the way. Everything is still happening. People are still talking, laughing, moving, posting, living. But somehow it reaches me differently. Distant. Slightly delayed. Like I am there, but not fully in it.

It is a strange place to exist in.

I go outside and everything looks normal. The sky is still the sky. Cars pass by, people cross the street, conversations overlap. Nothing has stopped. But inside, it feels like I am watching it all through a layer of glass. Not disconnected completely, just enough to notice it.

And the quiet sits there.

But at the same time, it is loud.

My thoughts feel louder than everything else. Small things echo longer than they should. A sentence I said earlier in the day replays in my head. A feeling I cannot fully name keeps tapping at me, asking to be understood. It is not peaceful quiet. It is full. Heavy in a way that is hard to explain without sounding dramatic.

It is like being surrounded by noise you cannot hear but can feel.

We tried to explain it to each other and kept circling back to the same thing. Everything feels like it is moving too fast and too slow at the same time. Days pass quickly. Weeks blur into each other. But moments stretch. Thoughts linger. Feelings take their time.

I know that does not make logical sense.

But I am starting to think that not everything we feel is supposed to make sense in a clean, logical way. A huge part of being human seems to live in contradiction. Wanting and not wanting. Feeling everything and nothing. Being present and somewhere else entirely.

Maybe this is just a phase. Maybe it is what happens when you are in between versions of yourself. Not who you used to be, but not fully who you are becoming either.

That in between space is quiet.

And loud.

You start noticing things you did not before. The way conversations feel different. The way certain places do not feel the same anymore. The way you can be surrounded by people you love and still feel slightly removed, like you are observing instead of participating.

It is not loneliness exactly.

It is something softer. Something harder to define.

I think part of it is change. The kind of change that does not announce itself. The kind that instead settles in slowly until one day you realise you do not quite fit into your own life the way you used to. Not in a bad way. Just differently.

And instead of resisting it, I am trying to sit with it.

To accept that maybe this quiet is not emptiness. Maybe it is space. Space for something new to take shape. Space to understand myself a little better. Space to listen, even when what I hear is messy or unclear.

The loudness, too, might not be something to run from. Maybe it is just everything I have been too busy to notice finally catching up with me.

So for now, I am here.

In this quiet that is not quiet.
In this noise that no one else can hear the same way I do.
In this strange in between.

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