I do everything I can to make it stop.

Music plays constantly, layered and loud enough to blur into noise. The television stays on even when I’m not watching it. I fill the silence until my apartment feels swollen with sound.

Sleep comes in shallow fragments. When I wake, my head aches like I’ve been clenching my thoughts all night.

Then—nothing.

The whispers are gone.

The abandoned building is quiet. The bridge holds only wind. The cemetery sounds like leaves and distant traffic and nothing else.

Relief hits so hard it almost knocks me flat.

And then something colder slips in behind it.

I find myself pausing in places that used to hum. Holding my breath. Tilting my head without realizing why. The world feels thinner somehow, like a layer has been peeled away.

The silence presses back.

I don’t know how long it takes me to realize I’m listening for it.

That I miss it.

The thought makes my stomach twist. I try to convince myself that this is what healing feels like—that the fear is just residue, that my mind is finally correcting itself.

But at night, when everything is still, I lie awake wondering—

Did the whispers disappear?

Or did I teach myself how not to hear them?

And worse—

If they were only ever there because I was listening…
what does that say about me now?

I stay very still in the dark, afraid that if I reach for the silence too hard, something on the other side might notice.

And answer.