Becoming Whispers | What Time Does

I'm sitting on my front steps this afternoon, and the air is thick with heat and the smell of cut grass from somewhere down the street.

A woman walks by with a dog, a golden retriever, tongue long out of his mouth, tail wagging. She smiles at me as she passes.

"Beautiful day," she says.

"It is," I say, and I mean it.

She keeps walking, and I sit there, watching the street, the trees, the way the light falls through the leaves in shifting patterns.

I've been sitting here for a while now. Not waiting for anything. Not avoiding anything. Just sitting.

And I realize: I don't remember the last time I felt restless.

Not the good kind of restless, the kind that pulls you toward something new.

The bad kind. The kind that made me feel like I was always in the wrong place, always missing something, always needing to be somewhere else or someone else or doing something more.

That restlessness is gone.

I don't know when it left. I didn't notice it happening.

But sitting here now, I feel it, the absence of that constant hum of dissatisfaction, that low-grade panic that used to live in my chest.

It's quiet now.

Not empty. Not numb.

Just... quiet.

I used to think that feeling meant I was broken. That something was wrong with me. That I needed to fix it, solve it, make it go away.

But I don't think that anymore.

I think it was just my body telling me: You're not where you're supposed to be.

You're not living the way you're meant to live.

And now I am.

Not perfectly. Not without questions or doubts or moments of uncertainty.

But I'm here. In my body. In my life. In this moment.

And the restlessness is gone because I'm not running anymore.

I'm not performing or hiding or waiting for permission to be myself.

I'm just... here.

The woman with the dog turns the corner and disappears. The light shifts. A breeze moves through the trees.

I stand up, brush off my shorts, and walk back inside.

The door closes softly behind me.