Me, My Life & Why Part 21

Part 21

I spiralled. Hard.

It wasn’t anything earth-shattering. Just a parking fine I forgot to pay and a letter stamped in red. I’d opened it at 6:42pm on a Wednesday with a fork still in my mouth. I hadn’t even finished dinner.

And suddenly, my heart was thudding like I’d committed treason. My head did that thing, you know, where the single incident becomes everything. Like the bill I forgot proved I was lazy, and the email I didn’t answer made me selfish, and the laundry I’d ignored confirmed I was doomed to live in disorganisation forever.

Cue the soundtrack of shame.

Alex was already over. He was making tea, talking about something odd and charming, a podcast on octopus intelligence or biodegradable glitter or some niche fact that makes the world feel weird and magic. I barely heard him.

He came into the room, looked at the letter, and tilted his head like a curious dog.

“Bad?”

I nodded.

He didn’t ask more. He didn’t try to fix it.

He just asked, “Do you want tea or silence?”

I didn’t even know that was a choice.

“Silence,” I said.

He handed me the tea anyway and sat beside me on the floor. Didn’t touch me. Didn’t fidget. Just sat. Present. Human.

We stayed like that for forty-five minutes.

There’s something unnervingly comforting about being allowed to fall apart without a commentary track. No advice. No platitudes. No “you’ve got this!” from someone who clearly doesn’t get it.

He just let it be what it was, me, spiralling in a hoodie with hair I hadn’t brushed and a letter in my lap that felt like the universe saying, you suck at life.

Eventually, I spoke. Some half-joke about how I was obviously failing the adulting level of the video game. He laughed, not at me, but like someone who’d played that level on hard mode, too.

I asked him how he always knew what not to say.

He shrugged. “I figured maybe you didn’t need someone to analyse you. Maybe you just needed company.”

And I don’t know what broke me more, the fact that he was right, or the fact that it had taken this long to be seen so simply.

I’ve had people love me for my potential, or for the way I tried to fit into their rhythms, or for my performance of “stable human.” But this was different.

Alex didn’t need me to be okay.

He just needed me to be real.

That night, he started talking again, about something small, something unrelated. I think it was birds. Or the way mushrooms communicate underground. He was animated, half-eating toast and half-spinning theories about fungal wisdom.

And I watched him.

And it hit me, not like a thunderbolt, but like a gentle light I hadn’t realised was always on.

Shit.

I was in love.

Not the movie kind. Not the kind with swelling strings and grand declarations. The kind where you realise someone has become part of your peace.

I didn’t say it out loud.

Not yet.

Not because I wasn’t sure, but because I was still getting used to not rushing things. Letting things grow instead of forcing them to bloom.

But in my head, I whispered it.

Not “I love you,” exactly.

More like: thank you for showing me what calm can feel like.

And I didn’t know silence could be this safe.

And you can keep talking about mushrooms forever if you want.