The Call Within

My therapist suggested that I keep a journal. For a long time, I couldn’t gather my thoughts. But finally, I forced myself to take a pen and a notebook and began writing down everything that was in my head.

It was 8 p.m. I turned on the desk lamp, opened the notebook and… froze. I decided to write about my afternoon dream. My hand seemed to move on its own across the page, describing the rain outside the window, the cat curled up asleep at my feet. Then, in my dream, a phone began to ring. I picked it up. On the other end, I heard a man arguing with a woman. A strange call. I listened more closely and recognized myself in the woman’s voice. It’s strange to hear yourself from the outside.

Suddenly, I opened my eyes.

The room was the same—the lamp glowing softly, the notebook lying in front of me, the pen still in my hand. Only… the phone.

It was ringing.

Not in a dream.

In real life.

The sound was muffled, as if coming from deep within the room, even though it lay right next to me. I slowly reached for it, feeling a strange, uneasy tension building inside me.

“Hello…” My voice sounded quieter than I expected.

A second of silence.

And then—again.

The same male voice. Irritated. Sharp. And the female voice… mine.

I froze.

Now it wasn’t a memory, not a dream—the words were happening at the same time as what I had just written. I lowered my gaze to the notebook.

The lines… were changing.

The ink seemed to sink deeper, blur, and the text was turning into something else. I read it—and heard it in the phone at the same time.

“You never listen… to me,” the man said.

And in the notebook appeared: “You never listen…”

“Why do you always make me the one to blame?” he continued. He said that I was never the one he dreamed of, that I couldn't understand him, he talked and talked...

Why do men act like this when they leave for another woman?

The lines in the notebook came alive again. My fingers had gone numb from gripping the pen so tightly.

I couldn’t believe my eyes—what was happening to me.

I slammed it shut.

My heart was beating so loudly it felt like it could be heard on the other end of the line.

“Who is this?” I asked, almost in a whisper.

But no answer came from the phone.

“It’s you,” a quiet voice said from somewhere very close.

I turned around.

Empty.

Only my reflection in the dark window—and behind the glass, rain that hadn’t been there just a moment ago.

I looked back at the notebook. Slowly opened it.

On a blank page, where I hadn’t written anything yet, a new line appeared:

“She lifted her head and realized—everything had gone wrong, not as she had planned.”

My hand reached for the pen on its own.

And in that moment, for the first time, I was afraid not of what I was hearing…

but of what I was about to write next.

I took a deep breath and exhaled loudly, trying to calm myself. I tried to pull myself together and understand what was happening. I decided that if I started writing short, positive phrases, it might somehow change the situation and calm me down.

“Everything is in my hands,” I began to write.

“I am attractive and intelligent.”

Flowers smell stronger after the rain.

I paused for a moment, listening to the silence. The phone had stopped ringing. The room became almost quiet—too quiet, as if someone had turned off the sound of the entire world.

…My therapist says that a large percentage of women experience stress after a divorce.

I stopped for a second.

Before, that phrase sounded like statistics to me. Something general, distant. Not about me. But now it suddenly became personal.

The light of the lamp grew softer, warmer, as if someone had gently dimmed it so as not to disturb the silence. Outside, the rain no longer seemed gray—the streetlights reflected in the drops, shimmering like tiny golden sparks.

The cat lifted its head, looked at me with a thoughtful, almost understanding gaze, and quietly purred, as if offering support.

Suddenly, it felt as if the room was breathing with me.

As if the walls, the notebook, even this evening—were on my side.

I lowered my eyes back to the page and wrote:

“I am not alone in this feeling.”

The ink settled evenly, calmly.

And in that moment, it seemed to me that somewhere very close—not loudly, but gently, as if from within—that same voice appeared again… but now without tension, without sharpness.

Calm.

Warm.

“You’re doing okay.”

I wasn’t afraid.

I looked out the window. It was already deep into the night. I didn’t feel like sleeping at all. The memories that had been tormenting me for so long seemed to have simply disappeared. I felt lighter, calmer.

“Tomorrow I’ll throw away his favorite mug,” I promised myself. “And I’ll start living again.”

It’s not that I still haven’t brought myself to throw away that stupid mug—

it’s that, somehow, it kept a little piece of hope alive that he might come back and drink his morning coffee from it.

I caught myself thinking that I was waiting for the phone to ring again. I wanted just a little more of that strange wonder. I understood that everything had gone not as I had wanted. But this evening… this evening had been the most unusual in my life. I had always dreamed of encountering something beyond the ordinary.

I glanced at the phone.

Silence.

Stillness.

And yet, something had already changed.

Not in the room.

In me.

I returned to the notebook and gently touched the page, as if checking whether it would respond again. The paper was still. Quiet. Just paper.

I smiled faintly.

Maybe that was enough.

I wrote one more line:

“Sometimes a miracle is simply hearing yourself clearly.”

The words remained as they were.

No changes.