For the longest time, my world was so loud. 

It was constantly doing this, doing that, running here, running there, answering that text message, dealing with this drama, no, make sure you don't leave him on opened, make it to this party, don't be late for this event, get this turned in on time, work until you drop, stay up till 3 in the morning on the phone because you've got no other time to talk to him, wake up 2 hours later and do it all over again. 

There was so much going on I couldn't catch my breath.

It was what I had asked for, though, so I couldn't complain. I wanted to get out there, I wanted to be social, I wanted to have more friends. 

I just didn't realize how draining it could be.

I started realizing it around springtime, when there was so much testing. ACT, Literary Rally, FBLA contests, Library Club contests, the biology CLEP, my 4-H contests, driver's ed. All in a matter of 2 months.

I had so much going on that I couldn't focus on him at all, and it made him furious, but he didn't want to show it. But I couldn't give up what I was doing.

So I tried to balance it. School by day, social life by night and weekend. Every afternoon, I'd head to dance practice or some sort of school event, come home, eat, hit the books until 11 at night, then talk to him until I couldn't keep my eyes open. 

About halfway through the spring, I'd perfectly mastered the ability to drop asleep at any given moment during school and wake back up as soon as I needed to.

Hell, I don't know how I even passed last year.

At times, quite often actually, I wanted to let him go because I couldn't hold on any longer. I wanted to but I couldn't. I just didn't have the time, I couldn't put in the effort, and the guilt of leaving him hanging all the time was eating me alive. It wasn't fair what I was doing to him. I was a horrible girlfriend. He didn't deserve me. 

But he loved me so much that the thought of letting go hurt even worse.

So, with everything going on in my life, instead of putting on earmuffs, I let myself be absorbed by all the noise.

I became numb to the world, and suddenly, his noise became the only clear thing in my life.

It's been three months since the breakup. For a moment, the sound was deafening. It hurt my ears and I cried and I couldn't take it.

Since then, a slow quietening down.

I've recently deleted all of my social media because I couldn't stand seeing pictures of him and his new girlfriends every day anymore. 

Now I'm sitting in absolute silence, and it's not a familiar sound to me anymore. In my new house, everything feels so foreign. He was the one thing that was steady. He came with me from the old house to the new house. He made me feel like I was at home again.

It's odd; my phone used to blow up and now I get one notification a day, if anything. And I still, in the back of my mind, hope that it's him, no matter how irrational that stupid hope may be. It's almost like I could chuck my phone off a roof, would anyone even notice? No one texts me anyways now that he's gone. 

I guess I got so caught up in him that I forgot about everyone else in my life. 

But I still hear some sounds, some old sounds, that make me laugh again, that make me feel at home again. Laughing with my cousins at our old videos we made as little kids. Absolutely losing it with my brother, riding home from the library, as he blares the Bohemian Rhapsody sang by Toad off the aux cord in my new car. (which is a terrible song, don't google it.) My friends, giggling in the parking lot, about stupid petty drama going on in class that reminds us of our middle school days.

And sometimes, the silence is relieving. I'm sitting in the parking lot, after dance practice, back flush against the red brick wall, sitting in the damp grass. It's almost sunset and I'm by myself, waiting on my friend to come. 

My school is a bustling place, and I've never stopped just to listen to it when it was wasn't occupied by a thousand students. 

The wind hits my face, I hear birds and crickets and the hum of the air conditioners on the outside of the building. It's humid but cold and I close my eyes and it's almost like I'm breathing in the mist from a freezer.

I open my eyes and the courtyard is golden, and I can suddenly hear and see everything going on around me, and the voices in my mind are merely a whisper.

Silence can be agonizing, but also golden.

And however agonizing it may be to never hear from him again, I'm slowly learning to live with it.