I wasn’t sleeping much. The noise in my head had grown louder than the world outside it, emails unanswered, deadlines unmet, relationships misfiring in that subtle, unspectacular way that doesn’t make headlines but leaves bruises just the same.

So I walked. At night, mostly, with a pair of old headphones and a playlist built more from desperation than curation. I wasn’t searching for anything. Just silence that didn’t feel empty. And then, one evening, beneath the low hum of street lamps and the distant hiss of passing cars, I heard it.

A sound so deep and resonant it didn’t feel like it entered through my ears, but through my bones. It was a whale. Singing.

When a Song Knows You: The Healing Power of Unexpected Connection

Every night after that, I listened to him. Sometimes in bed. Sometimes in the bath. Sometimes, while staring at the ceiling, I wish for answers. I never gave the whale a name, but I spoke to him in my head.

I told him things I didn’t tell anyone else. About the way I used to write poems before I worried whether they were good. About the person I loved who left quietly, as if they’d never belonged to my story in the first place. About the fear I wore under my clothes, disguised as ambition.

And the whale? He just kept singing. Long, slow notes. No judgment. No solutions. Just presence. There’s a kind of healing in being met like that, without expectation, without urgency. Just acknowledged.