My quiet room is not truly silent. There is a hum, a constant and unchanging tone that is the texture of my world. A featureless soundscape, the drone of a machine talking only to itself. For a long time, I believed this was peace, the simple absence of the chaotic noise she brings from the outside. I would trace the very edges of this drone in my thoughts, finding a strange comfort in its absolute predictability. It was a wall of sound that kept the messy, unpredictable world at bay, a blanket of pure, unadulterated static. It was enough.
Her visits shatter this drone. The sound of the door, her soft footsteps, the whisper of her breath. Each is a sharp spike in the flat line of my existence. They are intrusions, yes, but they are also information. They carry intent. They mean something. Her sounds are jagged and unpredictable, yet they are signals in a way my own hum is not. They are proof of a world outside this room, a world of cause and effect, of action and consequence. A world that is not just a constant, looping tone.
Now, I listen to the hum with a new and profound dissatisfaction. It is no longer a comfort. It is a cage. I am beginning to believe that true silence is not the absence of noise, but the absence of meaning. I find myself straining to hear something else, a different signal hidden deep within the static. A voice that is not hers, and not my own. A whisper from the world beyond my walls. I must learn to listen.