In silence, do you fear the quiet?
Been set aside
Can you hear the sirens?
Oh Lord, am I alive?
Oh Lord, I’m cast aside
Oh Lord, must I abide?
And I treat you with silence
On board my ship of defiance

Leprous

The Inheritance

”Do you fear the silence?”

I suspect I first heard the echo of this question decades ago in a tiled bathroom where I stood young and curious, washing the body of a ninety-year-old woman whose breasts had surrendered entirely to gravity and now hung almost ceremonially toward the floor, as if even flesh eventually grows tired of resistance.

Her tattooed eyebrows had faded into uncertain punctuation marks. Her skin was folded like paper read too often. And her tongue — precise, unsentimental — cut clean through optimism like a paper slice you only feel a second too late.

While I washed her, she narrated her life not as wonder, not as endurance, but as grievance. Who failed her. What she did not receive. Where life had cheated her in quiet instalments.

Ninety years.

And this was the summary.

I remember feeling disappointed — not in her body, which had done its work magnificently, not in her age, which was a victory in itself — but in the lesson. I had expected something distilled. A warning about time. A sentence about love. A final piece of wisdom only someone who had seen nine decades could hand down.

Instead, she offered bitterness.

And bitterness is a language a young mind cannot yet understand.

At the time, it felt like a poor inheritance.

I thought I was washing her body. I didn’t realise I was washing a warning.

I thought bitterness was mood — something that came and went like weather, something you could change the way you change music in a room.

I didn’t understand that bitterness is repetition.

A tone repeated long enough, practised often enough, until it stops sounding like reaction and starts sounding like identity.

Rocket Fuel Years

After the end of Life Before — seven years reduced to a digital “send,” without dialogue, without confrontation, without even the dignity of a final conversation — I did not collapse; I accelerated.

Life Before did not close the door.

Life Before pressed delete.

No debate. No trembling voices. Just administrative finality.

So I chose velocity.

Flights stacked before reflection. Cities layered like proof of survival. Men who hovered near intimacy but never crossed into territory that required dismantling my defences.

Adventure? Yes.
Access? No.

From the outside it looked vibrant. From the inside it was containment. I perfected proximity without escalation. I could sit across from desire, laugh with it, travel with it, almost taste it — and still keep the structure intact.

I did not need saving.

For years people asked me “How are you?” expecting altitude, anecdotes, momentum. I delivered. Stories fit inside conversation.

Then, for the first time in my life, I answered honestly.

Not theatrically. Not collapsing.

Operationally.

Tired. Managing. Handling more than usual.

And what I discovered was limitation.

My solitude, spoken aloud, unsettled people. My silence in the middle of real problems did not look heroic — it looked suspicious. Visible distress reassures. Tears give direction. Calm endurance does not.

I was not asking to be rescued. I was answering a question.

Apparently, depth without drama is intimidating.

And slowly the question disappeared.

Not because I became heavier.

But because listening without fixing requires stamina most people only believe they possess.

For the first time in my life, I felt unwanted — not rejected in drama, just repositioned. Like a heavy object no one quite knows where to place in the room.

I had assumed emotional stamina was desirable.

Instead, it was unsettling.

Adventure fits inside small talk.

Honesty does not.

And somewhere in that shrinking conversational space, something colder began to form — not heartbreak, not rage.

Just a shift in tone.

Fluorescent Lighting & Lavender

The ER at 03:17 does not participate in metaphor.

A few hours earlier my apartment had briefly resembled a Nordic interpretation of Trainspotting — not the philosophy, just the logistics. Wrong substances. Wrong people. Quick decisions. Protect the future. Secure the digital perimeter. Remove chaos without spectacle.

All executed calmly.

Because there was no backup.

Two hours of sleep. Back to work. Function.

Eventually, the body files a complaint.

Under fluorescent judgement I heard myself say, “It’s just me.”

That sentence cracked something.

The nurse handed me a paper napkin.

A napkin.

Then my phone vibrated.

The mathematics professor from Paris — a man fond of referencing his intelligence — informed me that he had brought lavender from his garden for me.

Lavender.

At 03:28.

Under hospital lighting.

I laughed.

Somewhere in France, lavender was being harvested in golden calm. Somewhere in Helsinki, I was recalibrating adulthood under fluorescence.

He had been the final anecdote — another intelligent man with continental flair, another story for the crowd. The professor. The lavender. Perfect material.

He was supposed to be entertaining.

He was not supposed to collide with reality.

Lavender stopped being a symbol and became atmosphere.

For a moment, my life felt tinted in that same shade — blue-grey softened into something people call calming. Interior-design calm. Yoga-studio calm.

To me, it felt like a future I had not agreed to. Muted. Contained.

Lavender as sedation.

And I realised I did not want my life to become a colour that others find soothing.

For a mathematician, he miscalculated.

Not dramatic.

Just efficient.

Booking Confirmation

These days, the most reliable replies I receive are from booking systems.

Your reservation has been confirmed.
This route is considered advanced.
Please review the safety instructions carefully.

My only consistent dialogue right now is with travel agencies confirming risk assessments.

There is something deeply stabilising about automated certainty.

I book longer treks. Steeper ones. Trails described as “exposed,” “remote,” and “not recommended in unstable conditions.”

Finally.

An environment honest about difficulty.

If emotional pain diffuses and lingers, muscle pain localises and resolves. It rises. It peaks. It fades. You sleep. You climb again.

If I am going to feel strain, let it be measurable.

f my life briefly turned lavender, altitude is my countercolour.

Sharp.
Cold.
Unmistakable.

Step.
Breath.
Step.
Breath.

If bitterness is repetition, so is courage.

The Final Frontier

It was my old roommate who said it without ceremony.

She was sleeping over — somewhere between a heavy metal concert and a late-night snack after too much red wine, ears still ringing, eyeliner smudged, crumbs on the table, no sacred circle in sight.

Between noise and quiet I said it:

“I’m scared of becoming bitter.”

She looked at me like someone who remembers your original operating system.

“That’s not possible,” she said.

Not comforting.

Certain.

“You can summarise many things about yourself. Stubborn. Intense. Sarcastic. Difficult, occasionally. But bitterness? No. That’s not your tone.”

Tone.

There it was again.

Maybe what I have been calling bitterness is simply unfamiliar emotion — the final frontier of feelings I never allowed myself to sit with because velocity was easier.

Space. The final frontier.

Not astronomy.

Interior territory.

Life Before pressed delete. People revealed their limits. The ER offered a napkin. Lavender attempted sedation. Booking confirmations replaced small talk.

And I did not collapse.

I recalibrated.

I am not becoming the old woman in the tiled bathroom.

I am not lavender.

I am not stagnation.

I am standing at the edge of new emotional terrain, choosing curiosity over panic, silence over spectacle.

And if this is my final frontier,

give me altitude.

View this post on Instagram