No Headphones, No Problem: How I Got Comfortable In The Silence

Written by olivia mazzola

photographed by elianavega

For as long as I can remember, I lived with a soundtrack in my ears. My headphones were glued to my eardrums from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep, blocking out unwanted thoughts and spiraling obsessions I wasn’t ready to face. At the heart of my need for constant noise lied a deep discomfort with the sound of silence. I was a music addict, of sorts, living in a melody driven bubble of bliss.

The bubble recently popped, however, when disaster struck and silence became unavoidable. At the beginning of my six-week study abroad excursion at Emerson’s Kasteel Well, my headphones broke, leaving me music-less and afraid. I panicked, unsure of how to survive the quiet. Sure, I would be in a major city the following week and could get a replacement pair then, but spending even a few days with nothing to fill the air sounded nightmarish. Just me and my thoughts. No playlist to drown them out.

The lack of constant noise was a shock to my system at first. Discomfort ran deep under my skin when insecurities got loud, and there was no longer an option to drown those thoughts out through pressing play. I itched for my beloved headphones and their ability to make my anxieties disappear.

But the initial unease and withdrawals soon wore off, giving life without headphones a chance to show me the beauty that lives in the quiet.

Instead of club music jolting me awake, my morning routines morphed into something slow and gentle. The silence turned them into a ritual for gathering thoughts and grounding myself. As I went about my day without a carefully curated playlist to hold my hand, I finally noticed how I was feeling, instead of how the music I chose to play made me feel. In the constant noise, I took on the emotions of whatever artist or chord progression played. In the silence, I heard my emotions in a new way. I listened to myself for the very first time.

By the time I got my hands on a replacement pair, I found myself letting the cheap, Dutch-branded wired earbuds collect dust on my desk. I still listened to music every day—I’m not a monster— just not all day.

Spending time in the hum of nothingness offered me time to slow down. It pushed me out of my comfort zone by forcing me to deal with unwanted thoughts, instead of just drowning them out.

The noise was always a temporary solution. As soon as I hit pause, the unwanted thoughts—the anxieties, the obsessions, the spirals—would circle right back. Embracing silence offered those pesky thoughts a moment to tire themselves out, giving clarity a chance to come to the foreground.

Our lives are filled with far more stimuli than we can handle. We are constantly scrolling, watching, reading, thinking; there’s only so much our brains can take. I hadn’t realized how much my brain needed a break from all of this noise, until existing in the quiet gave me a way to experience the world without the expectation of anything other than just being.

I still love my music, but I no longer rely on it to drown out my thoughts. Silence is not empty, or scary—it is space to breathe, space to reflect, and space that I can’t believe I now look forward to.