How Silence Feels

How Silence Feels

I still remember the first day of psychology class—the room buzzing with nervous chatter, notebooks half-open, everyone pretending to look calmer than they felt. Deadmau5 plays in one corner of the room while the other corner talks about English from the last period. Even in the chatter and the chaos, the clock on the wall seems to tick louder with each passing moment.

Then you walked in, the professor with an armful of books and quiet confidence, and the room fell into an uneasy silence. As you set your things down, we all tried to read you, but something about you—something gentle, something steady—stood out to me even then. I could not explain it; I could only feel it. That night, with my inbox glowing in the dark and my thoughts spinning too fast, I wrote to you—words I should never have sent. I told myself it was harmless, that you were a counselor and counselors are safe to talk to. But the truth was simpler: my pain was louder than my judgment, and I did not stop to consider how others might see it or what it might mean for you.

At our first meeting, you asked the question of all questions. “What happened to you?” and sadness spilled out of your eyes. The tears like molten lava escaped the corners of my own. I remember the days when our conversations felt thick with both emotional and mental weight—hours of words that seemed to spill out because they had nowhere else to go. I remember being warned to choose my words carefully in emails, yet you also knew that writing was the only way I could truly speak. Putting thoughts on a screen felt safer than saying them out loud, and you understood that, even when the messages grew heavier than either of us expected, because of my mental state. My immaturity met your words of truth and wisdom that stay with me to this day.

And yet, what does someone do when psychology ends, and new classes begin? I had found comfort in your room—more than I expected, more than I ever knew how to explain. Time has a strange way of softening the edges of old wounds, and somehow it keeps moving even when we do not feel ready to follow. I can hardly believe it has been thirteen years since I first stepped into your classroom. The pain that once felt unbearable has long since faded, and now it feels as though I am only chasing ghosts—shadows of emotions that once held me captive, but no longer have the power to hurt me, to split me open once again.

The time came when you could no longer help me. Perhaps the tide had turned. Or maybe I had quietly healed. But life kept going around us, indifferent to our unspoken ending. I found myself searching for your face in places I knew you would not be—like the courthouse during elections—just in case. Just to feel, if only for a second, that the past was still intact. You were never there. And somehow, that absence felt like learning the lesson all over again: that everything had changed.

At times, I feel like a fish filleted upon its side. The pain of missing you is sometimes heavier than the hurt from years long gone. And true to who I have always been, I turned to writing to make sense of it—to hold this new ache in my hands and look it in the eye. What I have written is an unfinished song, a small attempt to give shape to something intangible. It feels like a symbolic grave for what once was—a quiet marker for the loss of a friendship, weathered by time and silence, a memorial.

I knew you were going to leave

You said so yourself that day

Your voice slipped softly from the world

And the quiet took its place

Somehow, that silence said it all.

All I have left are the memories

Etched sharp upon cold steel

Cold as the day I learned

How the silence feels

There goes my bleeding heart.

I still look for you in the shadows

Chasing echoes through the fog

Not to bring you back, but to remember

How it felt to be understood

Now the space between us hums

With words we’ll never say

Just memories, etched sharp

Upon cold steel, cold as the day

I learned how silence feels

Gray stone beneath my fingertip

Love carved deep refuses to fade

I still look for you in the shadows

Chasing spirits through the fog

Every step, a whispered prayer

But you were never there

Just memories, quiet and still

Heart aches in the quietness

I call your name

And finally know how the silence feels.

So, I lay these words down gently

Like flowers on an unmarked grave,

Not to mourn what might have been

But to honor what once was brave.

If silence is the final answer,

Then I accept it as it stands

A memory, soft and distant,

That I release with open hands.

The End.

I think I finally understand that some people come into our lives only for the distance they are meant to walk with us. You walked with me through a storm I did not know how to name. Then the road naturally split. I used to fear that letting go meant losing everything, but now I see that letting go merely means letting the past stay where it belongs. I can remember you without grasping for you. I can miss you without breaking. And maybe that is the truest form of healing of all. I lived this, it mattered, and now I can finally set it down. May the potholes in life remain just that. Thank you, my friend. I miss you more than words can say. But I will see you once again. Until then, I will write with a passion, live life out loud, and love like there are no more tomorrows. Goodbye, my friend.