Comforting silence

As the exhaustion of these final weeks catches up to me, I am starting to appreciate a good long comfortable silence in my friend group.

Silence is one of those things I have never been hugely comfortable with. I talk over it, I push back against, it terrifies me. But catching up with some friends for a coffee this week, we lulled into a comfortable exhaustion driven silence that just made me feel…good.

I liked that it gave me a chance to reflect on how at ease we are with each other and I liked the fact that we didn’t feel the need to constantly talk. Only the occasional sip punctuated the air and we just relaxed. It made me realise that the things we do with friends don’t have to be hectic late nights out, or crazy stories. They can be mundane moments. Cooking meals together. Going for runs together. Studying together. Silence.

Don’t get me wrong, I probably will still find silence scary. I think I see it as a failure of social relations usually marked by uncomfortable shifting, humming or flicking through an empty feed. It's just a good lesson for me to realise that there are different types of silences and not all of them are so bad.