The Quiet After

The house was quiet in a way he wasn’t familiar with.

There had always been noise. Voices rising to fill the rooms before footsteps even entered them. Opinions flung with gusto in attempt to make them bounce off the wall and land deep within your psyche. His father’s booming declarations. His mother’s laugh—sharp, theatrical, performed for an imagined audience that always seemed to be watching.

The quiet wasn’t just unusual, it was unnerving.

Elliot sat in the same chair he’d grown up being too small for. But now, it was fine. Largely because no one would question his core fundamentals as he sat there. No one would hypocritically ask if he thought he was being clever or trying to make a point. No one would interpret his choices anymore.

They were gone. Both of them. Three months apart, as if they'd agreed they’d had enough of the world without the other. Gone too fast to say goodbye, but long enough apart for him to wonder if he was supposed to miss them equally, or miss one more than the other.

He didn’t know how to feel. Which really did feel like the worst part of all the grief.

Guilt curled around him like smoke, and not because they were gone. Not exactly.

But because deep down, somewhere in the quietest part of himself he felt relief. Like there was no need to fight over nothing anymore.

Relief that he no longer had to keep performing. He didn’t need to psyche himself up for the emptiness of a battle he felt forced into yet were never worth having. Did this drama ever actually benefit anyone? Why were they always so different yet effectively the same?

He was exhausted. He'd been exhausted for years. From the outside, Elliot had always seemed bright, charismatic, full of charm. He had jokes ready for every situation, anecdotes sharpened and practiced until they pierced armour. He knew how to work a room, how to take a compliment with a grin and throw it back bigger.

It was all an act.

He’d learned it young. When he’d scored top in his class in history and got a muttered “good” from his father, it only clicked when he exaggerated that win the next time. “Best in the year,” he’d said, a stretch but believable. His mother had smiled then. That smile had been like sunlight.

He’d kept pushing the story. Better scores. Louder victories. Bigger, better versions of himself.

And when he wanted to show someone the quiet parts, his love of silence, of calm, of slow books, he didn’t. Not because he didn’t trust the person, but because he knew the voice that would echo after. His father’s scepticism. His mother’s critique. Always imagined, but always real enough to scare him away.

So relationships were fleeting. He never invited anyone home. Never let anyone stay long enough to ask too many questions. He didn’t have room to carry their expectations on top of the ones he already shouldered.

Now… there was space. An emptiness so vast it felt dangerous. For the first time, there was no one to perform for.

Who was he when no one was watching?

He stared at the cold cup of tea in his hand. It had gone untouched. It wasn’t until now that he noticed how regularly he would be told to finish it quickly. Always by someone hyper fixated on his every action and inaction. “Tea’s no good if it sits too long,” his mother would have said, not unkindly, just loud enough to be definitive.

He swallowed hard, not at the tea, but the memory.

“I don’t know who I am,” he said aloud, just to hear something.

The walls didn’t answer.

That scared him more than anything.

But under the fear, there was something else. Both an ache and a curiosity.

What would it feel like to say no to an invitation and not make up an excuse? To not smile if he didn’t feel like it? To read what he wanted, not what made him seem interesting?

What would it feel like to just… be?

Elliot stood slowly, body heavy with years of being “on.” He walked to the bookshelf where his mother’s photo smiled down at him. Her act was always perfect, always poised. His father’s was beside it, arms crossed, grin confident, like he always knew the punchline.

“I wish I could’ve shown you,” Elliot said. “But maybe I didn’t even know, until now.”

He didn’t expect forgiveness. He wasn’t sure he needed it.

All he knew was that something new had begun. The grief perhaps, or maybe a change. Not a reinvention, not a reinvention at all. Maybe just a new thought for someone he might’ve been if he’d ever felt safe enough to try.

He stepped out the front door. The air was cool. It was quiet here too.

He walked to his car.

Not performing. Not smiling. Just walking.

And for the first time in his life, it felt enough.

Worn mask on the floor

In silence, he meets himself,

Strange, and softly true.