Elsa Wiklund

Yesterday I found myself shouting in the hallway again. It wasn’t even about anything dramatic—just that my younger son had used toothpaste to "paint" the mirror while the older one blasted some YouTuber with a screeching voice from the tablet. It’s like living inside a never-ending pinball machine where I’m the ball.

I live in Stockholm, Sweden, in a flat that's too small for the kind of noise two boys aged six and eight can generate. It echoes in here, the way chaos does when it’s tightly packed between four walls. Most days I have this low hum of tension just beneath my skin. I wake up already bracing for the storm. Elias, the older one, has started talking back lately, and I know it’s normal, but sometimes his tone cuts deeper than it should. He told me last week that I’m “always angry.” Maybe I am. And then I spent the evening crying while cleaning up dried spaghetti from the floor.

I’m 33, and I feel 50. My husband was in Zürich again last week. Three nights gone, back just in time to fall asleep on the sofa with his suitcase still packed. When he’s here, he’s kind, but kind in that removed way—like a guest who’s trying not to step on anyone’s toes. We don’t argue much anymore, and I’m not sure that’s a good sign.

The birthday party last Saturday tipped me over. Two little girls sat quietly drawing horses with glitter pens while their mother sipped coffee and smiled like someone who still had her own thoughts. I stood there watching my boys wrestle on the carpet, knocking over popcorn and shrieking like wild animals. I burned with envy. Not of the girls, necessarily, but of the peace. The ease.

I know I sound ungrateful. I love them. I really do. But the noise, the mess, the constant alertness—it’s eroding something in me. Some days, I don’t even know who I am anymore, outside of being the referee, the cleaner, the one who yells too much. And the worst part is how alone I feel in all of it, even when the apartment is full.

I’ve started fantasizing about silence. A cabin by a lake, no screens, no screaming, no one needing anything from me. Just for a weekend. Just to remember what quiet feels like.