Between you and me, there is silence. Not empty silence. Full silence. Heavy with everything we never learned to say.
I’ve been thinking about this lately. How much we hide. Not because we’re dishonest. But because we never learned the language for certain truths.
We can talk about weather. About work. About politics and sports and what we ate for dinner. These words come easily. We’ve practiced them our whole lives.
But the other words? The real words? They stick in our throats like fish bones.
I love you. I’m scared. I need help. I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel alone even when you’re right next to me.
These sentences are simple. Short. A child could speak them. But most of us never do.
Why?
I think we were trained. From childhood. Slowly. Carefully. We learned that certain truths were dangerous.
The child cries from genuine grief. The parent says: “Stop being dramatic.”
The teenager feels terror about existence. The adult says: “It’s just a phase.”
The grown person feels profound loneliness. Friends say: “You need to get out more.”
We learn, without being told directly, that our real feelings are not acceptable. That our raw experience must be translated into something smaller, safer, more comfortable for others to hear.
So we become fluent in a fake language. The language of what people expect. The language of performance.
“I’m fine.” “Everything’s great.” “Can’t complain.”
These are not truths. These are passwords. They let us pass through conversations without really entering them.
My friend Rafiq and I have known each other for twenty years. We’ve shared meals, trips, celebrations, crises. We talk every week.
Last month, his mother died. I called him. We spoke for an hour.
Afterward, I realized: we said nothing. Not really. We circled around the pain like it was a fire too hot to approach. We used words that meant nothing. Safe words. Comfortable words.
What I wanted to say: “I know this is breaking you. I know you feel like the ground has disappeared. I’m terrified of losing my own mother. I don’t know how to help you. I don’t know how to help myself. But I’m here. In my confusion. In my fear. I’m here.”
What I said: “Let me know if you need anything.”
He said: “Thanks, I will.”
Neither of us will. We both know this. The offer is ritual. The acceptance is ritual. The whole conversation was ritual.
This is what I mean by silence. Not the absence of words. The absence of meaning.
We speak constantly. Phones buzzing. Messages flying. Conversations happening everywhere. But how much of it is real? How much reaches the place where we actually live?
I think most of us are desperately lonely. Not because we lack company. But because we lack the language to share what’s actually happening inside us.
There’s a man I see at the tea stall every morning. We’ve exchanged pleasantries for five years. Good morning. Nice weather. How’s work. He knows nothing about me. I know nothing about him.
One day, I saw him crying on a bench. Quietly. Trying to hide it. I walked past. Pretended not to see. He would have been embarrassed if I stopped. We don’t have that kind of relationship. We don’t have the words for that.
But I think about him sometimes. What was he crying about? What burden was he carrying while we discussed weather every morning? What was living behind his “good morning” that I never saw?
We are all carrying things. Hidden things. Things we don’t know how to say.
The silence is layered. Like archaeology. Dig into any relationship, and you’ll find the fossils of conversations that never happened. Not because we were cowards. But because we didn’t have the vocabulary.
My father is seventy-three. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a real conversation with him. About what matters. About fear. About death. About what his life has meant to him.
We talk about practical things. Money. Health. Family news. Safe territories. The important questions sit between us, huge and unspoken, like elephants we’ve agreed not to mention.
I know he loves me. He knows I love him. But we’ve never said it properly. Never found the words that match the feeling.
Maybe there are no such words. Maybe some feelings are too big for language. Maybe the silence is not failure but honesty—an admission that certain truths cannot survive being spoken.
I don’t know.
What I know is this: the weight of unsaid things is heavy. It accumulates. Year after year. Conversation after conversation. All the “I’m fine”s piling up like stones.
Sometimes I imagine a world where we could speak freely. Where “how are you” was a real question and “I’m struggling” was a real answer. Where we didn’t have to translate our experience into acceptable versions before sharing it.
Would that world be better? Or would it collapse under the weight of too much truth?
Maybe silence serves a purpose. Maybe it protects us. From each other. From ourselves. From the unbearable intimacy of being truly known.
But sometimes, late at night, I wish I could say the real things. To my father. To my friend. To the stranger on the bench. To myself.
I’m scared most of the time. I don’t know if I’m living correctly. I feel alone in ways I can’t explain. I want to be understood but I’m afraid of what understanding would require.
These words. So simple. So impossible.
I wrote them just now. Easily. Because you’re not here. Because this page is safe. Because writing to no one is easier than speaking to someone.
Maybe that’s why we write. Because paper doesn’t judge. Because silence on a page is different from silence in a room. Because the words we can’t speak sometimes find their way through fingers instead of throats.
Tomorrow I’ll see Rafiq. We’ll talk about nothing again. The safe things. The ritual things.
But maybe—maybe—I’ll try something different. Maybe I’ll say: “I don’t know how to help you. But I want to try.”
It’s not much. It’s not the whole truth. But it’s closer than “let me know if you need anything.”
Small movements. Toward honesty. Toward the real.
The silence won’t disappear. It’s too old. Too deep. Too trained into us.
But maybe we can make small holes in it. Let a little light through. Say one true thing where we used to say nothing.
That might be enough.
It has to be enough.
Because the alternative—a lifetime of ritual words and hidden truths—feels like a kind of death.
A slow one. Made of silence.
I don’t want that. I don’t think you do either.
So tomorrow. One true thing. Small but real.
Let’s see what happens when the silence finally breaks.