They say that in the end, I'm going to be alright. But no one ever tells you that before the "end" arrives, you have to survive the long nights — the kind where your thoughts are louder than the world outside your window.

The irony is, I was always the one who loved being alone.

I was the one who could sit in silence for hours without feeling empty. The one who never feared quiet rooms or unanswered notifications. The one who found comfort in her own company and never mistook solitude for loneliness.

And then you came with stories that never seemed to run out.

You talked about everything — about your favorite bands, about songs I had to listen to at specific hours of the night, about how a single guitar riff could completely rearrange your mood.

You told me about your favorite music over and over again, until without realizing it, I memorized every tiny detail of you — the way your eyes softened when you mentioned a lyric that felt too personal, the slight change in your voice when a song carried memories you never fully explained.

I, who used to treasure silence, started treasuring your sound instead.

I didn't mind when my quiet spaces filled with your voice. I didn't mind when my phone lit up more often than it ever had. Somewhere along the way, I even started waiting for it.

And maybe that's when everything began to shift.

Because the more I grew used to your presence, the more I wanted to make sure you stayed. My questions multiplied. My messages grew longer. My worries became easier to hear.

I was never trying to be loud. I was only trying not to lose something I hadn't even fully understood yet.

But somewhere between the late-night playlists and the unfinished conversations, your sentences became shorter. Your excitement softened. You were still talking — just not the way you used to with me.

I don't know when you began to pull away.

There was no argument. No dramatic goodbye. No confession of exhaustion.

Just distance forming quietly, like fog that doesn't announce its arrival but slowly blurs everything in sight.

"But it might take a hundred sleepless nights…"

There were nights when I stayed awake longer than I ever had before, replaying the sound of your laughter in my head, trying to pinpoint the exact moment our rhythm stopped aligning.

Me — the girl who never feared being alone — suddenly unable to sleep because of someone else.

It almost feels cruel.

I kept wondering if I had become too much noise, if my presence — once something you welcomed — slowly turned into something overwhelming that you never knew how to name.

So I tried to shrink.

I rewrote messages before sending them. Deleted paragraphs that felt too honest. Replaced "Are you okay?" with "It's fine if you're busy."

I tried to return to the quieter version of myself. The one who didn't ask too much. The one who didn't need reassurance. The one who could exist without leaning toward anyone.

But it turns out, once your heart learns the shape of someone's voice, it cannot simply unlearn it overnight.

"'Cause I don't wanna fall in love if you don't wanna try…"

I don't want to keep standing still while you slowly step backward without ever saying why. I don't want to keep guessing what lives inside your silence when all I ever needed was something honest and simple.

Maybe I wasn't too loud. Maybe we were just different in the ways we handle closeness and distance.

After a hundred sleepless nights, I'm beginning to understand that not everyone who fills your quiet is meant to stay there forever.

And if I truly am going to be alright in the end, maybe it's because I am slowly returning to the girl who was never afraid of silence —the girl who didn't lose herself just because someone stopped speaking the way they used to.

Still, on certain nights, I can almost hear you talking about your favorite song again —and how, without realizing it, I once memorized you the way people memorize lyrics they never meant to learn by heart.