I used to think the hardest part of sleeping alone was the stillness.

The hush that settles when there’s no one breathing beside you. No shifting of sheets. No weight on the other side of the mattress. Just you. And the dark. And the soft sound of your own thoughts thudding against the walls of memory.

At first, it felt like absence. Like I was occupying a space meant for two. Like I was the only soul left in a church long after the hymn had ended. The pillows still held the shape of her laughter. The bed, somehow, felt haunted—not by a ghost, but by everything unsaid.

I kept to my side for weeks. Maybe months. I can’t say exactly when I stopped reaching for her in the middle of the night. When I stopped expecting the rustle of her turning, the warm brush of a knee in sleep. But there was a moment—not dramatic, not cinematic—just one quiet night when I rolled into the center, and didn’t roll back.

It felt rebellious, at first.

Like claiming land.

I stretched out, arms wide, one foot cooling itself outside the covers. The bed sighed beneath me, like it had been waiting for me to show up fully. And for the first time in a long while, the room didn’t feel like an echo chamber of what once was. It felt like mine.

There’s something sacred about solitude when you stop fighting it.

I started doing strange little things. Reading again by lamplight. Books with slow pages, beautiful sentences that didn’t care if they were going anywhere. I kept a notebook on the nightstand—nothing fancy, just a tattered blue spiral I once used for grocery lists. Now it holds fragments: lines that arrive unannounced, thoughts I can’t shake, dreams that make little sense in daylight.

Sometimes I write letters I’ll never send. To her. To the man I used to be. To the boy who thought love would solve everything. Maybe those letters are prayers. Maybe they’re poems in disguise.

And then there’s the music.

Some nights I play Springsteen low in the background, just loud enough to remind me I still have a pulse. Other nights it’s Leonard Cohen or Mary Chapin Carpenter—songs with just enough ache to crack the shell around the day. I’ve cried in that bed more than once. Laughed too. Not the full-bellied kind, but the soft kind that slips out when a memory blindsides you with its tenderness.

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This bed, once a symbol of what I’d lost, has become a place where I remember who I am. Not who I was with someone. Not who I used to pretend to be. Just me. In flannel pajama pants. One sock on. Hair a mess. Still alive.

There’s beauty in that.

I think we’re too quick to frame solitude as loneliness. Too quick to think silence means something’s wrong. But I’ve found that when the house is quiet and the bed is big enough to lose yourself in, something true can rise to the surface. The part of you that doesn’t need to perform. The part of you that still believes in small rituals and soft landings.

I’ve learned to say goodnight to no one and still mean it.

I’ve learned to pray without words. To listen for nothing in particular. To wake up grateful for the simple gift of not having to explain myself.

The beauty in an empty bed isn’t in what’s missing. It’s in what it makes room for.

Space.
Breath.
Becoming.

So if you’re lying in bed tonight, alone and unsure—let yourself sprawl a little. Let your body stretch out in all its imperfect grace. Let the silence hold you like a song with no chorus. You don’t need permission to be whole where you are.

You're not a half waiting for a second piece. You’re a story still unfolding. And sometimes, the most sacred chapters are written in the quiet.

Sleep well, my friend.

I’ll see you in the morning light.

—Grey Wolf

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