My apartment has a soundtrack.
It starts around six, sometimes earlier if the day has been loud and I want the quiet to win by points.
The door clicks shut behind me with that same tired patience, like it’s used to me arriving alone and does not expect a sequel. Keys in the bowl by the entryway. Jacket over the chair. Shoes by the mat, angled just so, because I still like the idea that my life can be lined up neatly if I try hard enough.
Then the building speaks.
The radiator ticks in short bursts, a metronome that can’t decide if it’s keeping time or complaining. The pipes answer with a distant watery throat-clear. Upstairs, someone walks across their living room and the floorboards carry it down in a dull percussion, as if the whole place is one big instrument and we’re all contributing whether we mean to or not.
I turn on the lamp in the corner. The room shifts from “empty” to “occupied,” even though the only occupant is me and a pool of light the color of old paper.
The light lands on the couch, on the stack of mail I’ve been ignoring like it’s a hobby, on the dust that shows up every day as if it has a key. I always notice the dust. I rarely do anything about it right away.
There are routines, and then there are rituals.
Mine has just enough steps to feel like I’m running a small operation. Heat water. Make coffee. Rinse the mug the slow way, the way you rinse a mug when there isn’t a chorus of other voices calling for it. The smell fills the kitchen and for a moment it feels like preparation, like I’m getting ready for a shared evening. Then I remember I’m preparing for myself, which is fine. It’s fine. It’s always fine until you say “fine” too many times and it starts to sound like a lever you’re pulling.
I sit in the same chair because it’s the best chair and because I have not yet reached the age where I rearrange furniture for excitement. The remote is where it should be. The phone is face down because I don’t want it lighting up like a needy little billboard.
On television, some bright person is explaining a foreign country I will probably never visit, and I nod along like this is exactly what I wanted. Sometimes I even learn something, which is a pleasant little surprise. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I just let the noise fill the room the way you fill a glass you’re not going to drink, just so your hands have something to do.
The problem with quiet is that it has no opinions.
It doesn’t argue, it doesn’t interrupt, it doesn’t demand. Quiet is polite company. Quiet lets you keep your stories tidy, your personal files labeled correctly, your feelings filed under “later,” which is the most popular folder in my mental cabinet.
That was the theory.
In practice there are small leaks. Not the kind that make headlines. The kind you don’t notice until you step on a cold spot in your socks.
I talk out loud more than I used to.
Not full conversations, nothing that would make a neighbor knock and ask if I’m okay, just commentary. Little narrations. “Well, that’s broken,” I’ll say to the cabinet door that has been broken for months. “Really,” I’ll mutter at the weather like the sky is taking notes.
Last week I said “good job” to the toaster when it popped at the right shade of brown, and then I stood there holding toast, realizing I’d just congratulated an appliance. The toaster did not accept the praise. Probably for the best.
I’m not some tragic figure sitting under a single bulb while rain slides down the window. My apartment is clean enough. My bills are paid. My neighbors wave. The grocery store recognizes me as a repeat customer, which is comforting and also a little embarrassing if you think about it too long.
I’m doing alright.
Still, there are moments where the quiet gets bold.
It fills the hallway when I come out of the shower and there’s nobody to see me do that awkward towel shuffle. It settles into the chair across from mine like an invisible auditor. It lingers after I turn the TV off, and the sudden absence of noise feels larger than the noise ever was, which seems backwards but isn’t.
Sometimes I think the apartment is too good at being empty. It holds itself like it could host a dinner party at any minute, but it never does. The table stays clear because it only needs to feed one person. The extra chair stays pushed in, obedient, unused, saving its energy.
I catch myself lingering at the door when I come home.
Not because I’m afraid to go inside, but because going inside makes the evening official. The schedule begins. The little machine of my life starts up and runs smoothly, and there’s something about smoothness that can feel like sliding if you’ve been on it long enough.
People imagine living alone wrong. They think it’s either freedom or misery, and it’s neither.
It’s mostly normal. It’s the ability to leave a book open on the table and know it will still be there in the morning, which is a kind of peace. It’s also the ability to get sick and realize nobody is going to bring you water unless you bring it yourself, which is a different kind of peace, and I’m not sure which one counts as the real one.
I don’t even know when the thought started, the one that keeps showing up like a cat you didn’t invite but also didn’t chase away. The idea that maybe the apartment shouldn’t be this quiet. That maybe I shouldn’t be the only warm thing in the room with opinions.
But I’ll sit there at night, coffee cooling too fast because I forget to drink it, and I’ll listen to the radiator ticking its little code, and I’ll imagine a second set of footsteps. Lighter. Quicker. A soft thump on the couch cushion. A brief rustle that means somebody else is alive in here.
Not a person. I’m not rebuilding my whole life.
Just something.
A cat, obviously. I don’t know why I keep pretending it’s going to be a goldfish.
And the ridiculous part is how small it sounds, like I’m submitting a request form to the universe for one extra heartbeat in the room. I keep telling myself it’s just a thought. A harmless thought.
Thoughts have a way of becoming plans if you let them sit long enough.
Hard to tell.
Probably when a thought stops being a thought and starts being a need.
Probably the decision was already made.
All that was left was to find the place that would let me pretend I was still being careful.
