I wasn't sure what to expect of my first week living alone.
After nineteen years at home, I was nervous about a separation of four months. My family makes the phrase 'close-knit' seem unfriendly and distant, and I won't even be home for the holidays.
But where I expected oceans of tears, instead I found a forest of quiet. My nights hold such loud silences that not even the television can drown them out, and my days are filled with the unfamiliar clamour of this city that speaks its own language.
Loneliness, apparently, is not the stuff of tragedy as I expected, but rather a silence that I carry within me.
And yet, all around me in this strange, foreign place, I find small wonders. A barking dog halts in its noisemaking and wags its tail hopefully as I walk past. An old man doodles in a notebook with palsied fingers while riding the metro. A child practices her ballet positions in the street as her mother has a heated discussion on the phone. I greet the same girl in my class every day, and today she finally smiles first and says "Privyet!" ("Hi!").
Through my silence, I have begun to make friends with this new, beautiful place. It's as though Peter hears my hesitant footstep, and quickly sends me something from around the corner to make me smile. "It will be okay," Peter tells me, "Don't be afraid."
