☕ Coffee and Quiet with Derek Wolf
Protecting Your Quiet
The bedroom holds a tired kind of light.
A small lamp glows on the nightstand and leaves the corners of the room in soft shadow.
Outside the window, distant music drifts in from a nearby house.
Laughter rises for a moment, then falls back into the night.
The day has ended for the clock, but the nervous system still feels wide awake.
If today isn’t the day, remember us when your moment opens.
Buy Me a Coffee
A phone lights up beside the lamp with another message.
The vibration rattles the wood, a small mechanical shiver in an already crowded hour.
A preview flashes across the screen, a few urgent words from someone who wants an answer, who usually expects one.
From the other room a television voice recites headlines that do not belong in this part of the day.
Noise keeps reaching for her, as if quiet has become something she must defend instead of something that arrives on its own.
The mattress receives the full weight of a tired body.
Eyes stay open, tracing the familiar cracks in the ceiling.
Blue light from the phone paints the room in short pulses.
Each buzz feels like a tap on the shoulder, another small pull away from herself.
The blanket covers her legs, yet muscles along the thighs and calves stay tight, ready to respond if anyone needs something.
Shoulders still carry the shape of the whole day.
Conversations that ran long.
Requests offered as small favors that turned into larger commitments.
Messages in a family group chat that never truly rests.
A friend who vents at late hours because that is when fear gets louder than reason.
Nothing about it feels cruel, yet all of it feels heavy.
There was a season when being reachable felt like a kind of identity.
The person who answered every call.
The one who stayed awake so someone else would not feel alone in the dark.
It looked like devotion, like proof of love.
Over time it also became a quiet erosion.
Bedtimes drifted later.
Mornings arrived with eyes that felt sanded and a spirit that lived thin at the edges.
Another message lands and the phone hums again.
This time the sound hits differently inside the body.
Instead of rising to meet it, attention lingers in the ache behind the eyes, in the heaviness at the base of the skull.
Fatigue speaks with more honesty than any passing thought.
The body has been asking for quiet for a long time.
Tonight the request finally sounds clear enough to hear.
Gaze shifts from the glowing screen to the soft dark of the ceiling.
The contrast feels like a choice laid out in front of her.
One more reply, one more scroll, one more headline to hold in a mind that already feels full.
Or the unfamiliar act of ending the day simply because the body says the day is done.
Lamp, blanket, pillow, all wait with her, witnesses to many nights that did not need to last as long as they did.
Memory rises without being called.
Another bedroom, another night, the same restless glow on the walls.
Thumbs moving over glass while a knot of anxiety grew in the stomach.
By the time the phone slipped from her hand, sleep had turned skittish, unwilling to come close.
Thoughts replayed every conversation.
Did I say the right thing.
Did I miss something they needed.
Will they feel abandoned if I wait until morning next time.
Morning did not care about those questions.
Morning only brought a tired face in the mirror and a full day that still needed focus and clarity.
Very little remained for her own life because so much had been spent in the dark when no one could see the cost.
Breath moves shallow in the chest as that memory passes through.
The body remembers in its own language.
Shoulders rise a little higher.
Jaw holds tighter.
Thoughts begin to speed up, ready to repeat the same pattern.
Then another awareness appears underneath all that rush, quiet and steady, like a hand on the inside of her ribs.
One simple sentence forms there and travels upward.
My quiet is not selfish.
The words feel new and familiar at the same time.
They repeat once, then again, almost like a gentle mantra.
My quiet is not selfish.
On the third repetition breath reaches a little lower.
The throat softens.
The space around her heart feels a little less crowded.
The phone turns face down so the light cannot reach her eyes.
Vibration may still arrive if another message comes, yet the visual pull has been cut in half.
It is a start.
A small act of protection that would be invisible to anyone watching, but meaningful inside her own system.
Part of the mind wants to explain this choice to everyone at once.
To send a long message that says, I care about you and I also need to protect my nights.
I will answer in the morning.
I am not abandoning you.
That urge to justify rises quickly, trained by years of soft apologies every time constant availability was not possible.
Instead a different kind of explanation begins, one that lives only inside for now.
I am allowed to end the day.
I am allowed to rest even when other people are still talking.
I am allowed to let the world continue without my response for a while.
Each sentence builds a small fence around a fragile nervous system, not to keep love out, but to keep her spirit from spilling past its own edges.
Noise still lives in the room.
A faint voice from the television down the hall.
Music outside.
The constant hum of a refrigerator.
None of that sits fully in her control.
Quiet, in this season of life, is not the absence of sound.
Quiet is the moment she chooses which sounds belong inside her and which can remain at the edges of awareness.
Fingers find the remote and press one simple button.
The television voice disappears.
The screen fades to black.
The room grows noticeably softer.
Only the outside sounds remain, distant and less personal.
Shoulders drop another small measure.
The air feels wider, as if the room has taken a deeper breath with her.
Tiredness rises again, this time carrying tenderness instead of only weight.
Tenderness for the woman who has tried so hard to be everything for everyone and then wondered why sleep stayed so far away.
Tenderness for the girl who once learned that being reachable kept people close.
Tenderness for the version of herself who is now learning another way to love without losing her own center.
A hand comes to rest at the center of her chest.
Underneath the palm, the heart continues its steady rhythm, loyal and tireless.
This is the relationship that matters most tonight, the bond between her own body and her own spirit.
Warmth spreads outward through her sternum and across the tops of her shoulders, slower and steadier than any notification.
A simple idea arrives and settles in with ease.
Quiet hours.
Not a rule that needs to be defended.
Not a rigid program that can break.
A gentle agreement with herself.
After a certain time each night, the phone moves away from the bed.
Messages can land in the dark without her eyes there to receive them.
The world can call out, and she can answer when morning returns.
The thought does not feel selfish.
It feels sane.
It feels like the way caretakers sustain their ability to care.
It feels like the way sensitive hearts remain open without tearing.
A picture forms in her mind, the phone resting across the room on top of a closed book.
Far enough that she must stand up if she truly needs to reach it.
Close enough that real emergencies could still find her.
Feet find the floor and follow through.
The wood feels cool against bare skin.
Each step away from the nightstand feels like movement toward herself.
Fingers place the phone on the dresser, screen dark now, and leave it there.
No announcement.
No apology.
Only a quiet act of trust that the people who love her can survive until morning without her typing replies in the dark.
Back in bed, the room feels different.
The lamp still glows.
Outside voices still drift through the glass.
Yet a layer of urgency has left the air.
The body senses it first.
Jaw muscles loosen.
The tight band at the base of the skull releases some of its hold.
Breath reaches the abdomen and rests there just a little longer before moving out again.
The blanket settles more fully across her legs.
The weight feels comforting instead of restrictive.
The pillow welcomes the back of her head as if it has been waiting for this version of her to arrive, the one willing to release the day.
Attention turns inward, away from corridors of noise, toward the small interior space where her own thoughts live when they are not crowded by everyone else’s voices.
That space speaks in images more than sentences.
A morning where she wakes before the alarm and has enough energy to stretch and greet the day without resentment.
A day where patience with others comes from a full well rather than from habit.
An evening where the phone can sit quietly on a shelf while she reads or watches the light change on the wall, present in a life that finally feels like her own.
Eyes grow heavier as those images settle into place.
The bedroom has not changed.
The world outside has not grown quieter.
What has changed is her position inside all of it.
No longer pressed against every sound, every request, every word.
There is a small distance now, a gentle boundary where her quiet can breathe.
Before sleep pulls her under, one last understanding moves through her awareness with the softness of a blessing.
Protecting this quiet is not withdrawing from life.
It is returning to it on her own terms.
The lamp clicks off.
Darkness gathers easily around the room.
Outside, a final burst of laughter rises and fades.
Inside, breath settles into a calm, even rhythm at last.
The Truth Beneath
Protecting quiet is not a refusal to care.
It is a decision to care from a place that is not already exhausted.
When a woman who listens deeply allows her nights to fill with everyone else’s noise, her spirit slowly slips to the edge of her own life and calls it love.
In truth, love asks for something different.
Real care needs a grounded center.
Boundaries around rest do not close the heart.
They keep the heart honest.
Quiet hours become a form of devotion, a way of saying to the body, you matter enough for me to stop when you are tired.
From that devotion, presence returns with more clarity, more patience, more truth.
The world will always offer reasons to stay awake a little longer.
Messages will wait in the dark, headlines will refresh, stories will keep arriving.
The deeper work is to remember that peace is not given by the outside world.
It is chosen in these small interior agreements, when a woman decides that her quiet is worthy of protection, and lets that decision guide the way she meets every voice that reaches for her in the night.
Stories written in the quiet hours.
Derek Wolf.
“The Truth Beneath” Links to add to the bottom of stories
Protecting Your Quiet
The bedroom holds a tired kind of light.
A small lamp glows on the nightstand and leaves the corners of the room in soft shadow.
Outside the window, distant music drifts in from a nearby house.
Laughter rises for a moment, then falls back into the night.
The day has ended for the clock, but the nervous system still feels wide awake.
If today isn’t the day, remember us when your moment opens.
Buy Me a Coffee
A phone lights up beside the lamp with another message.
The vibration rattles the wood, a small mechanical shiver in an already crowded hour.
A preview flashes across the screen, a few urgent words from someone who wants an answer, who usually expects one.
From the other room a television voice recites headlines that do not belong in this part of the day.
Noise keeps reaching for her, as if quiet has become something she must defend instead of something that arrives on its own.
The mattress receives the full weight of a tired body.
Eyes stay open, tracing the familiar cracks in the ceiling.
Blue light from the phone paints the room in short pulses.
Each buzz feels like a tap on the shoulder, another small pull away from herself.
The blanket covers her legs, yet muscles along the thighs and calves stay tight, ready to respond if anyone needs something.
Shoulders still carry the shape of the whole day.
Conversations that ran long.
Requests offered as small favors that turned into larger commitments.
Messages in a family group chat that never truly rests.
A friend who vents at late hours because that is when fear gets louder than reason.
Nothing about it feels cruel, yet all of it feels heavy.
There was a season when being reachable felt like a kind of identity.
The person who answered every call.
The one who stayed awake so someone else would not feel alone in the dark.
It looked like devotion, like proof of love.
Over time it also became a quiet erosion.
Bedtimes drifted later.
Mornings arrived with eyes that felt sanded and a spirit that lived thin at the edges.
Another message lands and the phone hums again.
This time the sound hits differently inside the body.
Instead of rising to meet it, attention lingers in the ache behind the eyes, in the heaviness at the base of the skull.
Fatigue speaks with more honesty than any passing thought.
The body has been asking for quiet for a long time.
Tonight the request finally sounds clear enough to hear.
Gaze shifts from the glowing screen to the soft dark of the ceiling.
The contrast feels like a choice laid out in front of her.
One more reply, one more scroll, one more headline to hold in a mind that already feels full.
Or the unfamiliar act of ending the day simply because the body says the day is done.
Lamp, blanket, pillow, all wait with her, witnesses to many nights that did not need to last as long as they did.
Memory rises without being called.
Another bedroom, another night, the same restless glow on the walls.
Thumbs moving over glass while a knot of anxiety grew in the stomach.
By the time the phone slipped from her hand, sleep had turned skittish, unwilling to come close.
Thoughts replayed every conversation.
Did I say the right thing.
Did I miss something they needed.
Will they feel abandoned if I wait until morning next time.
Morning did not care about those questions.
Morning only brought a tired face in the mirror and a full day that still needed focus and clarity.
Very little remained for her own life because so much had been spent in the dark when no one could see the cost.
Breath moves shallow in the chest as that memory passes through.
The body remembers in its own language.
Shoulders rise a little higher.
Jaw holds tighter.
Thoughts begin to speed up, ready to repeat the same pattern.
Then another awareness appears underneath all that rush, quiet and steady, like a hand on the inside of her ribs.
One simple sentence forms there and travels upward.
My quiet is not selfish.
The words feel new and familiar at the same time.
They repeat once, then again, almost like a gentle mantra.
My quiet is not selfish.
On the third repetition breath reaches a little lower.
The throat softens.
The space around her heart feels a little less crowded.
The phone turns face down so the light cannot reach her eyes.
Vibration may still arrive if another message comes, yet the visual pull has been cut in half.
It is a start.
A small act of protection that would be invisible to anyone watching, but meaningful inside her own system.
Part of the mind wants to explain this choice to everyone at once.
To send a long message that says, I care about you and I also need to protect my nights.
I will answer in the morning.
I am not abandoning you.
That urge to justify rises quickly, trained by years of soft apologies every time constant availability was not possible.
Instead a different kind of explanation begins, one that lives only inside for now.
I am allowed to end the day.
I am allowed to rest even when other people are still talking.
I am allowed to let the world continue without my response for a while.
Each sentence builds a small fence around a fragile nervous system, not to keep love out, but to keep her spirit from spilling past its own edges.
Noise still lives in the room.
A faint voice from the television down the hall.
Music outside.
The constant hum of a refrigerator.
None of that sits fully in her control.
Quiet, in this season of life, is not the absence of sound.
Quiet is the moment she chooses which sounds belong inside her and which can remain at the edges of awareness.
Fingers find the remote and press one simple button.
The television voice disappears.
The screen fades to black.
The room grows noticeably softer.
Only the outside sounds remain, distant and less personal.
Shoulders drop another small measure.
The air feels wider, as if the room has taken a deeper breath with her.
Tiredness rises again, this time carrying tenderness instead of only weight.
Tenderness for the woman who has tried so hard to be everything for everyone and then wondered why sleep stayed so far away.
Tenderness for the girl who once learned that being reachable kept people close.
Tenderness for the version of herself who is now learning another way to love without losing her own center.
A hand comes to rest at the center of her chest.
Underneath the palm, the heart continues its steady rhythm, loyal and tireless.
This is the relationship that matters most tonight, the bond between her own body and her own spirit.
Warmth spreads outward through her sternum and across the tops of her shoulders, slower and steadier than any notification.
A simple idea arrives and settles in with ease.
Quiet hours.
Not a rule that needs to be defended.
Not a rigid program that can break.
A gentle agreement with herself.
After a certain time each night, the phone moves away from the bed.
Messages can land in the dark without her eyes there to receive them.
The world can call out, and she can answer when morning returns.
The thought does not feel selfish.
It feels sane.
It feels like the way caretakers sustain their ability to care.
It feels like the way sensitive hearts remain open without tearing.
A picture forms in her mind, the phone resting across the room on top of a closed book.
Far enough that she must stand up if she truly needs to reach it.
Close enough that real emergencies could still find her.
Feet find the floor and follow through.
The wood feels cool against bare skin.
Each step away from the nightstand feels like movement toward herself.
Fingers place the phone on the dresser, screen dark now, and leave it there.
No announcement.
No apology.
Only a quiet act of trust that the people who love her can survive until morning without her typing replies in the dark.
Back in bed, the room feels different.
The lamp still glows.
Outside voices still drift through the glass.
Yet a layer of urgency has left the air.
The body senses it first.
Jaw muscles loosen.
The tight band at the base of the skull releases some of its hold.
Breath reaches the abdomen and rests there just a little longer before moving out again.
The blanket settles more fully across her legs.
The weight feels comforting instead of restrictive.
The pillow welcomes the back of her head as if it has been waiting for this version of her to arrive, the one willing to release the day.
Attention turns inward, away from corridors of noise, toward the small interior space where her own thoughts live when they are not crowded by everyone else’s voices.
That space speaks in images more than sentences.
A morning where she wakes before the alarm and has enough energy to stretch and greet the day without resentment.
A day where patience with others comes from a full well rather than from habit.
An evening where the phone can sit quietly on a shelf while she reads or watches the light change on the wall, present in a life that finally feels like her own.
Eyes grow heavier as those images settle into place.
The bedroom has not changed.
The world outside has not grown quieter.
What has changed is her position inside all of it.
No longer pressed against every sound, every request, every word.
There is a small distance now, a gentle boundary where her quiet can breathe.
Before sleep pulls her under, one last understanding moves through her awareness with the softness of a blessing.
Protecting this quiet is not withdrawing from life.
It is returning to it on her own terms.
The lamp clicks off.
Darkness gathers easily around the room.
Outside, a final burst of laughter rises and fades.
Inside, breath settles into a calm, even rhythm at last.
The Truth Beneath
Protecting quiet is not a refusal to care.
It is a decision to care from a place that is not already exhausted.
When a woman who listens deeply allows her nights to fill with everyone else’s noise, her spirit slowly slips to the edge of her own life and calls it love.
In truth, love asks for something different.
Real care needs a grounded center.
Boundaries around rest do not close the heart.
They keep the heart honest.
Quiet hours become a form of devotion, a way of saying to the body, you matter enough for me to stop when you are tired.
From that devotion, presence returns with more clarity, more patience, more truth.
The world will always offer reasons to stay awake a little longer.
Messages will wait in the dark, headlines will refresh, stories will keep arriving.
The deeper work is to remember that peace is not given by the outside world.
It is chosen in these small interior agreements, when a woman decides that her quiet is worthy of protection, and lets that decision guide the way she meets every voice that reaches for her in the night.
Stories written in the quiet hours.
Derek Wolf.
“The Truth Beneath” Links to add to the bottom of stories
If this story spoke to you, you may also enjoy