The silence of your first apartment is loud at first. Then one day it starts to sound like freedom.

Those first nights alone in a place are strange because there is no background hum of other people. Nobody comes in, nobody asks you anything, and the quiet keeps sounding like something missing. It is not exactly loneliness. It is your ear adjusting to a room where nothing happens unless you make it happen.

Give it a few weeks before deciding how you feel about it. Fill some of it deliberately: music in the kitchen, somebody over on Thursdays, a routine that makes the place yours. The quiet usually stops sounding empty around the same time you stop waiting for it to be interrupted.