The quiet moments are the hardest. The ones after the chaos, after the terror; the ones that happen after the noise. Everyone listens when there’s noise. Everyone cares when they can see it, when you can give an update. And when there’s nothing to report…there’s silence.

And in the silence, you’re alone. You’re there with yourself.

I’m in a field. Alone with tall grasses and sunlight. And it’s beautiful and deeply lonely–a loneliness I can feel in my chest.

It’s the place where you replay every decision and thought and conversation in your mind that happened when you were reacting or living or surviving in the chaos.

And you’re the only one who knows. Because how do you explain that those quiet moments are the hardest. Because you don’t feel like you have the right to cry out for someone to save you from your own thoughts, because you can’t explain that this is when the panic sets in, because there aren’t words for this.