I Can Hear the Silence Before It Arrives

There’s a moment, so subtle, so quiet, that I feel before silence arrives.

It’s not a sound, not exactly. More like a shift. A soft drop in the energy around me. My cochlear implant might still be working, people may still be talking, but something inside me already knows: silence is coming.

It’s like the final blink of a streetlamp before it goes dark.

I’ve lived with this sixth sense for years. Most people think silence just happens when the noise stops. But for me, silence is something I sense. It builds like fog rolling in over a quiet town—slow, inevitable, and soft around the edges. I don’t hear silence. I feel it.

I feel it in my fingertips. In the way my skin suddenly tightens. Like the world is packing up its sound and slipping it into a suitcase, one rustling layer at a time.

When my battery runs low, I don’t need a beep to tell me. I already know. It’s not panic I feel. It’s preparation. Like the hush before a lightning strike, when even the trees seem to hold their breath.

And yet, not all silence is the same.

Sometimes it arrives as a thief, robbing me of connection mid-conversation. Leaving behind unfinished words and confused faces. In those moments, silence feels like betrayal.

But other times, it arrives like a soft friend. A companion I welcome. I take off my processor at night, not with fear, but with relief. In those moments, silence becomes a blanket pulled gently over my mind. It gives me space to breathe, to be, to exist without having to decode every syllable or guess every laugh.

I don’t vanish in silence. I become sharper, like breath in cold air.

The world doesn’t realize this. Sound is exhausting. Even artificial sound. Even helpful sound. And silence, when chosen, is not an absence. It is a return.

I’ve learned to respect that.

My cochlear implant gave me access to sound, yes. But it also taught me to listen with my body, my breath, my memory. I can hear the exit, even when the room is still full of voices.

Sometimes, I let the silence win.

Not because I’ve given up, but because I know that I don’t need to chase noise to feel whole.

Because silence doesn’t always mean I’m disconnected.

Sometimes, it means I’ve finally come home to myself, with clarity, strength, and no need to explain.

To live between sound and silence is not confusion. It is resilience.

To sense what others cannot hear is not weakness. It is wisdom.

And to choose silence is not surrender. It is power.

Let the world understand this.
Deafness is not the absence of sound. It is the presence of a different kind of knowing. A deeper kind of listening.

We don’t need to be fixed.
We need to be heard.
We need to be respected.
We need to be seen beyond the volume of our voices.