Once I put my child to bed, the house became too quiet.
Mom went to bed early, and the child was sleeping deeply even while kicking off the blankets. I was the only one sitting on the couch after turning off the living room light. Only my phone screen glowed white. When I checked the clock, it was eleven. Too early to go to bed, too late to do anything.
It had been about two months since I’d returned after getting divorced.
People said it was for the best. Mom, my older sister, and even the friend who called every now and then. I knew they meant it to comfort me. But every time I heard it, I thought to myself: What exactly was for the best? Living at my mother’s house with a child in my mid-thirties? That was supposed to be a good thing?
I never said any of that to anyone. I couldn’t. It was my choice. I was the one who left. So I thought that even if things were hard, I wasn’t allowed to say they were hard.
During the day, I was fine. Because I had my child. Feed them, bathe them, put them to bed. When there were things to do, I didn’t have to think. But when night came, there was nothing left to do. When there was nothing to do, the thoughts began. And once they started, I couldn’t stop them.
What had I done wrong? Would things have turned out differently if I’d done things differently? How was I supposed to live from here on out?
Those thoughts came to me whenever I looked at the ceiling, and when I closed my eyes, they became even clearer.
It was the same that night. I couldn’t sleep, so I was fiddling with my phone. I opened YouTube, then closed it. I looked at the news, then shut it again. Nothing held my attention. Then, somehow, I pressed something and found myself on a streaming platform.
A list of livestreams appeared one after another. Gaming streams, food streams, chat streams. Things I had no interest in kept filling the screen. I was just about to close it.
But one of them caught my eye.
It didn’t have a thumbnail, and the title was nothing special. It had very few viewers. It was the kind of stream I could have passed right by, but I don’t know why I clicked on it. I really don’t. My hand just moved.
As soon as I entered, I heard a voice.
It was a low voice. A man’s voice. It sounded like he was reading something, or maybe just talking to himself. There were only a few people in the chat. It was a quiet stream.
I put in my earbuds so the child wouldn’t wake up.
The man wasn’t talking about anything particularly important. What he’d eaten that day, how the weather had gotten colder, the kind of songs he’d been listening to lately. Things like that. But somehow, I found myself listening. His voice was comforting. Cozy, maybe. Like turning on the radio late at night and hearing a DJ speak softly. That kind of feeling.
Someone in the chat typed, “I’m here again.” The man smiled and said,
“Oh, you’re here? Thanks. How was your day?”
For some reason, those words touched something in my chest.
How was your day?
No one had asked me that. Not Mom, not my sister. There was no reason for them to ask. My days were the same every day. Feeding my child, doing laundry, grocery shopping. It was the kind of day no one would think to ask about.
But this man was asking a stranger he didn’t know on the other side of the screen. And he meant it.
I didn’t type anything in the chat. I just listened. Curled up on the couch, listening to his voice through my earbuds.
About an hour later, he said,
“That’s all for tonight. Sleep well, everyone. Hang in there tomorrow, too.”
The stream ended. The screen went black.
I stared at that black screen for a long time.
I was crying. I didn’t know when I’d started. Tears were simply streaming down my face without a sound. I wasn’t sure whether I was crying because I was sad or because I was relieved. I just knew how grateful I was that someone’s voice had told me, “Sleep well.”
That night, I fell asleep for the first time in a long while.
The next night at eleven, I looked for that stream again.