Image by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

Alone, But Never Lonely

Doors. How she hated them, and how she loved them too.

They were a lot like eyes; they were the barriers to one’s mind, the gates to all their secrets and memories. To have them exposed to the world was a liberating risk, the greatest thing one could do to accept themselves — embracing vulnerability.

It was why she couldn’t bear going around looking people directly in their eyes. That sense of vulnerability overpowered her, overwhelmed her beyond words.

But a face without eyes was a lot like a house with no roof, windows, or doors. It forbade people from entering, from learning anything about the building that looked like it came right out of a ghost town. Everything that nature threw at it — snow, sleet, hail, the blazing afternoon summer sun, hurricanes — just slid right off. But it wasn’t resilience that kept the house; it was just a stone-strong sense of indifference.

She knew what became of the faceless — the windowless, the doorless, the roofless. Nobody knew what they looked like, what their feelings were, what burdens weighed them down just from their facial expressions.

Who are the faceless people? She’d hear everyone ask. When nobody got their answers, they started creating their own, filling in the blanks with whatever they pleased, never giving the voiceless a chance.

Answers couldn’t be rushed, however. People could only set a table for them and everybody would hope they show up on their own accord, whenever that would be.


They said silence is violent. But that was just a partial truth — it was also incredibly fragile. There were only a precious few waking moments of real silence in the day, and they were broken within a few milliseconds by people’s breathing, the crickets chirping in the evening, the soft rustle in the background as mice scampered around in the unoccupied darkness, and the thoughts of millions.

That kind of silence was violent because it was earsplitting.

But its sister, quiet, was much more forgiving and gave off the epitome of bliss. It didn’t shatter easily like silence did. It was a brick wall against every sound that bounced off of it. On the other side, only the faintest of echoes could be heard.

There is quietness everywhere, she thought. All that needs to be done is block out all the background noise. Turn off the TV that isn’t being watched by anyone, to only talk if it adds to the conversation, if it adds to people’s stories, just like authors do with characters’ dialogue in the books she would get lost in.

If only people could close the door a little bit softer. They believed that everything was so loud that quietness was just buried in all the white noise, but quietness was just so hushed and low that everybody missed it. Everybody except her.

It was like the rain that roared outside her shattered window, the drops that traveled down the glass in long, winding trails, making their journey towards the edge. As the noise progressed, so did the quiet, and it became even more elusive.

They would slam the door a little bit louder that night and again, she would be alone. The smell of must and mold would surround her, and suddenly she was a mere speck of dust in a vacant room, insignificant once more. She’d be a kindergarten student again, her stringy hair uneven, her front teeth crooked, her knees scraped and bloody from the jungle gym.

She’d be wondering what it was she had done wrong, what she had done to deserve to be pushed around, what was wrong with her, why she wasn’t like the other kids who made tens of friends instantly and effortlessly, and wondering what kept her from saying or doing anything about it.

Why are you so quiet? The children would ask in a mocking way. Because they had found a reason to vilify quietness too, for quiet people enabled complacency, difference, weakness. At least according to them. They have nothing in their brains, no opinions, no nothing, they would say in their shrill, sing-song voices.


Little did they know, quietness was a gentle weapon. Knives were sharp and quick, but never discreet. They left a glaring mess that couldn’t be missed and took ages to get rid of. Quietness embraced its role as the undermined, underestimated underdog, and struck when it was most unexpected. Just looking at it was disarming; it was a silent assassin, leaving nothing in its wake.

The quietest people have the loudest minds.

Out of her came a little voice that would often be ignored and ridiculed, but inside her was a Pandora’s box of thoughts and secrets and an independence of mind that was sharp as a double-edged blade and louder than a million person crowd.

There was a comforting sense of company that the quiet brought whenever she was alone. It wasn’t the kind of company that she’d have to endlessly ponder over like she did with people. People created risks that only worsened her aversion to action. Whenever she’d have to venture into the outside, into the noise, into their world, she couldn’t help but be cautious, not allowing herself to open up for fear she’d be cracked open if she wasn’t careful.

It wasn’t a matter of fearing people or despising them. She actually quite loved them. They fascinated her; all she could do was stare and observe, for talking caused her to overlook the littlest things — how their brows creased with worry and anxiety when they lied; when their eyes went completely blank, consumed with contempt, when someone said something they didn’t like; how they stopped listening and the gears in their brain ran a mile a minute as they tried to come up with a way to counter whatever they’d just heard. Oh, and the relentless interruptions! She had a family that loved to debate and argue over the littlest things, but only to win instead of to grow and learn. She could never observe as much as she wanted, for the constant, unnecessary interjections chipped away at all the profound, pivotal things that permanently went unsaid.

Spoken words lacked the substance written ones did, she decided. She’d always read when the others would go out, and she’d overhear all the complaints about how the dialogue in novels wasn’t realistic. Every sentence contained something important and worthwhile to the story, awkward silences were welcomed instead of avoided, and so was the quiet. That was how she liked it.

In the literary world, unrealistic prevailed over realism every time.


When her mother begged her to go out and “make more friends”, it would be a struggle to convince her that she didn’t need any. The quiet was her best friend, better than a lot of people she had encountered. Quietness was easy; it didn’t feel entitled to her life or demand too much from her. All it wanted was her ears and her mind to live in for as long as it wanted. Most of all, she wasn’t afraid; quiet never touched her memories, which she let locked away in her conscience. They were sacred, and they couldn’t let them be messed with by another human. She had this fear of feeling like the little time she had with other human beings was better than her time alone now.

But this fear of nostalgia was not her weakness; it was the biggest fulfillment of her quest to find serenity, a thing quietness brought her like no other. It didn’t hold her back; it was her own way of recharging while others recharged with more noise and more of the ambiguity that came with people.

So the door would be slammed a little bit louder, and she would be alone. She would be alone, like always, but never lonely.

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Bridgette Adu-Wadier

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Student | Graphic Design and Fiction Enthusiast | Amateur Writer | Study Machine

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