Chapter 19: Silence That Drives You Crazy
•⋅⊰∙∘☾✶☽∘∙⊱⋅•✾•⋅⊰∙∘☾✶☽∘∙⊱⋅•
A few days drifted by, and if you had asked me to describe them, I honestly wouldn’t have much beyond saying I was still alive, functioning, and somehow cohabitating with someone who had perfected the art of pretending I didn’t exist. To be fair, that was a skill I never thought I’d need to tolerate, but life had a way of surprising me.
It wasn’t dramatic.
𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂
And that was truly the worst part.
There were no fights, no confrontations, no explosive moments I could point to and say, this is the reason I can’t stand living here, here’s my proof. Instead, it was just... quiet. Controlled. It felt consistent in a manufactured kind of way, as if someone had carefully crafted a method for two people to coexist without interacting, and then executed it without any warning.
But there were times where I’d catch him staring at me, intensely...as if he was trying to unravel me with those icy blue hues of his.
Damien woke up early, left early, returned at his usual hours, and fell into his routine like clockwork. He was always around, but never crossed the invisible boundaries he set from day one.
He studied at his desk, worked out in the living room, and moved around the apartment with this precise, deliberate energy that made our shared space feel more like an exhibit than a home. Do not touch. Do not make noise.
And me? I adapted.
That was just what I did. The alternative was to pick fights with someone who responded to everything I said with either a word or nothing at all, and I didn’t have the emotional energy for that on top of everything else.
I stayed on my side, kept my belongings in check, obeyed his rules even when they didn’t make any sense to me, and eventually gave up trying to fill our silence with conversation after my first few attempts fizzled out between his indifference and my dwindling patience.
It was like tossing paper airplanes at a wall, something was happening, but nothing was getting anywhere.
It became oddly easy in a way that felt unsettling. Wake up, leave, work, classes, hospital, return, eat, sleep and repeat. A fully functional routine with the social warmth of a spreadsheet.
It was intentional. And somehow, that made it feel heavier than any noise could. Of course, there were exceptions, there always were.
Because occasionally, I’d mess up. Not in huge, life-changing ways, but in small, nearly insignificant moments where I forgot, or, to be honest, chose to ignore... the invisible lines he had drawn.
Maybe I left something a little too close to his side of the space. Maybe I used the kitchen a few minutes longer than I should have. Maybe I made more noise than he deemed acceptable, which, to be fair, seemed to hover around absolute zero.
And every single time, he noticed.
Because of course he did. The man had the observational skills of a smoke detector and was just as pleasant to trigger.
That’s when he would speak. Not casually. Not comfortably. But sharply, precisely, as if every single word had been carefully chosen before leaving his mouth.
"Move that."
"You’re in my space."
"That doesn’t go there."
Short, measured corrections that reminded me, time and again, that our living situation was not built on mutual understanding or compromise, but on rules that only he had written, in some font I hadn’t even been consulted about, and laminated.
At first, this annoyed me. An insistent kind of annoyance that stirred just under the skin and made me want to respond in kind, which I sometimes did in my head with lots of enthusiasm and no consequences.
Then it pushed my frustration level up a notch, which didn’t help matters at all.
Eventually, it began to gnaw at me in a way I struggled to admit out loud because owning up to it would mean acknowledging that the silence was winning, and I wasn’t about to let that happen. Barely. But still.
Because silence was a lot harder to ignore than noise. Noise you could push back against. It had edges you could pinpoint and react to. Silence just expanded to fill whatever space you allowed it, pressing in at the corners until it felt almost physical.
After a few days of this, I began to realize something I hadn’t anticipated.
I missed interaction.
Not necessarily from him! I didn’t give a fuck about him, let’s not get too carried away...but in general. The mundane, unremarkable kind that happens between people who share a space and acknowledge it with words.
The café buzzed with noise, chaos, filled with voices and movement that kept me grounded in a way I hadn’t truly appreciated until I lacked it in the evenings.
Even the hospital, with its quiet corridors and sterile atmosphere, held a sort of human presence that made the silence feel meaningful rather than punishing. People were there for a reason. The quiet had substance.
This, this was something else entirely. Like living in a place where sound existed without connection, where two people could share a room for hours and still have less interaction than two strangers on a bus.
Before long, without one significant moment to pinpoint it on, the whole situation began to drive me just a little crazy.
Maybe that’s why, on that particular night, I found myself doing something I hadn’t intended to do, hadn’t thought through, and could barely justify.
I had just finished eating, the all-too-familiar routine of instant noodles and quiet resignation settling in as I cleaned up and stepped into the living room. The apartment was dimly lit, the soft glow casting long shadows that made everything look a bit cozier than it was.
For once, Damien wasn’t immediately in sight, which either meant he was in his room or I had somehow managed to outlast him in our unspoken rivalry of who could loiter in the common area longer without acknowledging the other.
That alone should have signaled me to just head to bed. Stay out of trouble. Keep it simple. Enjoy the unreasonably comfortable mattress I had already established was a definite win, and face tomorrow when it came.
But instead, I drifted toward the living room and toward the couch.
It looked inviting in that specific, deeply appealing way that furniture does after a long day on your feet, when your bed feels like too much commitment to walk to. The cushions were thick, the material seemed soft, and something about the low light and angle was just calling my name in a way I didn’t have the energy to contest.
I let out a soft sigh, dropping onto it with a quiet groan that came from the depths of my spine, stretching out as I sank into the cushions, one vertebra at a time.
"Yeah," I murmured to myself, staring up at the ceiling in the quiet satisfaction of someone who’d made a fantastic choice. "This is nice. This is very nice. This is the best thing that’s happened to me today."
The silence enveloped me almost immediately, but it felt different this time. Not harsh. Not weighted down with invisible rules or the pressure of being watched. Just there, comforting and uncomplicated, filling the space like it had always been meant to be.
For once, I didn’t feel scrutinized.
For once, I felt like I could exist without overthinking where I was or how I was moving or whether I was accidentally crossing some invisible line drawn by someone with a very specific vision for how a living space should operate and seemingly endless time to enforce it.
My eyes started to droop slowly, exhaustion from the day creeping back in now that I’d finally stopped moving long enough for it to catch up. My mind softened just enough to let the tension slip away, the tight coil of the day loosening bit by bit with each breath.
And then,
"God, man! A...are you trying to give me a fricking heart attack?!"