I Grew Up in the Gaps Between Sentences
How silence raised me- a personal essay
I take breaks.
From people. From plans. From eight-hour study sessions.
Even from emotions —
Maybe especially from emotions.
I’ve always taken breaks.
Little pauses that feel like breath, like escape.
Not about giving up, but about needing the world to be just a little quieter.
A little more still.
There were times I wished I could sleep and never get up.
Not because I wanted to die —
But because I wanted to live.
Some part of me aches for a life where I don’t have to flinch at noise, movements, expectations, or applause that doesn’t feel earned.
Where I can just exist.
Without having to win.
Giving up comes naturally to me, like how perfume mixes with air.
Unnoticed, but present.
Sometimes, it’s over SAT math questions — I get too scared to even start.
And in those moments, I’m not avoiding work.
I’m afraid of silence.
Because silence isn’t quiet.
It’s filled with echoes:
“You cannot.”
“You are a failure.”
Those whispers are louder than people screaming their lovers’ names from mountaintops.
Funnily enough, both Darjeeling and Kolkata are home.
A mountain and a city.
Two extremes that raised me.
I grew up here and there — in the chill of one and the chaos of the other.
And somewhere in between, I became a contradiction.
People say I’m impatient. Others say I’m too patient.
I don’t even know which one is true.
I think I’m just trying to survive.
For silence.
I crave it.
But I also hate it.
Maybe that’s what makes me human — knowing I want what wounds me.
Silence has hurt me.
And it has healed me.
It’s been the scream I never let out.
The sob buried under blankets at night.
The stillness after someone shouted loud enough to make the walls shake.
But it’s also been my shield.
Like an umbrella against the never-ending rain.
The calm.
The only thing I could hold when everything else fell apart.
Many times, I’ve rooted for silence in others too, Wished people would stop talking.
Sometimes out of exhaustion.
Sometimes out of quiet jealousy.
Sometimes because their success echoed too loudly in a room I wanted to be seen in.
I want to be the best.
Silently.
Invisibly, almost.
I crave the gold star, but I don’t want to raise my hand for it.
It’s ironic — because I talk more than I should.
I fill the silence, sometimes out of habit, sometimes out of fear.
But even then, silence sits beside me.
Like a quiet witness.
A shadow.
An anchor.
It caves me into need, slowly,
Every time I fall into the world of fast —
Speed, deadlines, achievement, robotic-ness.
Once, I was in a hospital bed, shaking in pain.
Panic curled in my throat.
Tears streamed from places I didn’t even know could feel.
And just when I thought I couldn’t take anymore,
My body gave in.
The blood stopped reaching my brain.
And for one breathless moment —
Everything stopped.
The doctors told me I was gone for just a second.
A single blink.
But in that second of silence, I lived an eternity.
And I wasn’t afraid.
Not of that kind of stillness.
Not anymore.
Because maybe silence didn’t break me.
Maybe it raised me.
Taught me the quietest truths:
That peace is not always soft.
That stillness can scream too.
That in the space between sentences,
In the unsaid,
In the breaths we forget to take —
We survive. Through the gaps, as i keep on writing.
So I look forward to death, just to survive the noise of the world.
Not tryna be famous
just tryna feel less alone.
[@inkedinemotions] if u wanna read the mess that made me.
