Moments & Musings

P.E. Nyavor

Waiting has a smell.

Not the kind you can bottle and sell, not the kind that announces itself loudly like perfume on a stranger’s coat. It’s quieter than that—subtle, familiar, almost embarrassing in how well it knows you. It lingers in corners. It settles into fabric. It lives in the air right before a message arrives, right after a door closes, right when the clock insists on moving while your life feels paused.

Waiting smells like warm tea gone cold.

It smells like the inside of a bus at dawn, when you’re half awake and holding your bag too tightly. It smells like freshly washed hair on a day you hoped someone would show up. It smells like rain that never fully falls—just enough to darken the ground and keep you guessing.

Sometimes waiting is sweet.
Sometimes it is sour.
But it is never scentless.

There are seasons of waiting we choose: the patient kind that grows things. The kind where you plant, water, and trust time to do what it does best. You wait for bread to rise. You wait for a bruise to fade. You wait for your body to heal and your mind to forgive. That kind of waiting smells like yeast and sunlight and fresh pages—like something becoming.

But there are other waits—the ones that ambush you.

Waiting to hear back.
Waiting for results.
Waiting for clarity.
Waiting for someone to finally say what they mean, or mean what they say.

Those waits carry a sharper scent. They smell like your phone screen warming under your thumb. Like perfume you sprayed for no reason. Like the same room you’ve walked through ten times because pacing feels like doing something. They smell like late-night air, the kind that makes everything feel bigger than it is.

Waiting can be so physical.
It lives in the body before it becomes a thought.

It tightens your throat. It sits in your chest. It crawls into your appetite and makes food taste like cardboard. It keeps your eyes awake long after your body begs for rest. And when you finally sleep, waiting follows you there too—showing up in dreams as unfinished conversations and missed trains and faces you can’t quite reach.

If you’ve ever waited for love, you know it has a scent.

Not only the romantic kind. I mean the deeper love too—the love that makes you hope. The love that ties your heart to something you cannot control. Waiting for a person to change. Waiting for a friendship to return. Waiting for an apology you might never receive. Waiting for your own heart to stop flinching when you remember.

That kind of waiting smells like old photos. Like folded clothes in a suitcase. Like the cologne of someone you used to know, still caught in the collar of a jacket you can’t throw away.

And then there’s the waiting we don’t talk about—the private waiting.

Waiting to feel like yourself again.
Waiting for motivation to come back.
Waiting for a dream to stop feeling too big for your hands.
Waiting for your life to make sense in a way you can explain without sounding dramatic.

That waiting smells like quiet mornings. Like unopened curtains. Like “maybe tomorrow.”

It’s tempting to treat waiting like wasted time—as if nothing counts unless it’s loud and productive and visible. But waiting is not nothing. Waiting is the in-between where the soul does some of its most honest work. It reveals what you value. It shows what you’re afraid of losing. It exposes what you’ve been trying to control.

Waiting teaches you the difference between timing and denial.

Sometimes waiting is a gift. It saves you from rushing into the wrong door just because it was open. Sometimes waiting is protection disguised as delay. And sometimes—painfully—waiting is simply life being life, unfolding on a schedule that doesn’t consult your feelings.

But here’s what I’m learning: the scent of waiting changes when you stop resisting it.

When you stop treating it like a punishment, it becomes an invitation.

An invitation to breathe without chasing.
To rest without guilt.
To listen to yourself without drowning in noise.
To return to what still belongs to you: your choices, your habits, your hope.

Waiting stops smelling like panic when you give your hands something gentle to do.

Make the tea again.
Open the curtains.
Water the plants.
Write the paragraph.
Take the walk.
Fold the laundry slowly.
Call a friend.
Pray if you pray.
Breathe if that’s all you can manage.

Because even while you wait, you are still living.

And one day—maybe suddenly—you’ll notice the scent has changed.

The air feels lighter. The room feels larger. Your chest isn’t gripping so hard. The silence doesn’t intimidate you anymore. You’ll realize that what you were waiting for did arrive… even if it didn’t arrive in the shape you expected.

Sometimes what comes is the thing you wanted.
Sometimes what comes is peace.
Sometimes what comes is a new direction.

But something always comes.

And when it does, you’ll look back and recognize the scent of that season—the scent of waiting—and you’ll know: you weren’t stuck.

You were becoming.