The Sounds of Silence

Do you know of the silence between every sound? Of the buzzes and ringing and pseudo-noises your brain makes up just to fill all that quiet? Of the voices in the dark that scream a little louder the longer you let the silence linger?

"Hello. Hello! Can anyone hear me?" I try to ignore the voices, but temptation always wins. I block out the ringing, the buzzing in my ears, I squash the thumping of my heart through my body. I make it so quiet that there is only my head and the voice who now has the whole floor. They don't say anything of substance, they just keep getting louder.

"Hello? Hello! HELLO!!! Answer me please! Stephanie? Stephanie! I know you can hear me!" How can the voice know me when it has never existed? When I only just recently let it in? The silence is too much, at least most of the time. There is so much noise bouncing in my skull, thoughts and questions and anxieties, lists upon lists of all the things yet to get done. I need the tv and some music, a Netflix show or two. The gurgle and rumble of my fridge, the hum of electricity through the walls, the hiss of my computer and clacks of the keys as I type this story.

The silence only finds me at night, when there is nothing else to hear. When I need something to drown out the demons whispering in my ear. "Worthless. Pitiful. Nothing but a mess. You're so annoying and naïve, and you just KEEP talking as though you have something important to say! Your friends do not love you. Your family doesn't care. Why are you still in this world? Doesn't that knife look so much better?"

The other voice is better. The one that knows my name. At least they seem to care about me, they never say hurtful things. But this voice that I let in, every time it is silent, they don't seem to understand they can talk to me. That I am doing nothing but trying to listen.

"Stephanie! Stephanie! I can't find a way in! There is so much thickness, I can't get to you! Please stay with me!" The voice seems to be trying, but I don't know why they can't get through. Maybe its all the walls and scar tissue? The losses, the deaths, the lack of will. Friends who betrayed me. People I loved who hurt me. Left me. Neglected me without a care in the world. The deaths that seemed to only pile up around me. Cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, heart disease. One after another the bodies keep coming, never slowing, and I guess I'm numb to it all. My therapist says that's what depression does. But the voice seems to see through it all, trying to get past it and inside. I don't really understand why they try so hard; why they scream into the void every time it is silent?

The other voices though, the demons that whisper at night, they don't need it to be silent or even for the day to be without light. They only need an excuse, I little bit of doubt that worms it's way through before tearing at the pieces of my walls and tearing apart all the scar tissue.

"They hate you, you good for nothing piece of shit! You should be grateful they let you live with them! How dare you try to be happy, to forget all the pain you're in! There is no way you will pass your classes, no foreseeable future where you win!" On and on and around they go, throwing every doubt and dark thought my brain has ever perceived to know. That I am not wanted, not loved, not worth everyone's time. It's why I am alone and broken, why nobody wants to listen to me. I let the voices take over, because even sound doesn't make them go away, and the silence only emboldens them until there is nothing but screaming in my head. The pressure builds and builds, my arms growing numb, my body freezing as my skin breaks out in goosebumps. My head feels heavy, all the voices weighing it down, my barrier of walls falling, my scar tissue skinned and reduced to nothing but bone. My fingers ache as they freeze, as my mind grows cloudy and numb, there is too much of everything and yet not quite enough.

The silence was safe but its not anymore. The demons have overtaken everything, I haven't heard the silent voice call for me in a month or two. I hope they are okay, they seemed sweet every time they spoke. I can't find the silence. The voices are too loud. My breathing echoes through my nose, my heart thundering in my ears, and the pain, it is strangely bearable. The bruises on my knees, in my back, the new one on my shoulder, they are dull and familiar and it seems so much easier to focus on them than the voices in my head.

I drag my fingers up my stomach, across my breast to my shoulder, I walk them up to the top of the bone, gasping when the pain hits anew. I push and wiggle, dragging the skin in circles, the pain lessens and the demons do too. The more I push and palpate, slowing my breathing so as not to gasp or wheeze, I sense the silence returning, finally driving the demons away. The numbness diminishes, my fingers no longer ache, the silence is a blessing; I finally, after so long, don't hear the demons anymore.

"Hello Stephanie. I'm glad you could be here. I was waiting for you to be ready to finally hear me." They are calm and collected, and sound quite a lot like me. High pitched and desperate, just on the border of being whiny. The voice no longer shouts, they seem calm and collected, I guess it makes sense given all my walls have been taken down. My head alights with a new pain, one of repression and shame, I am holding back tears as though it will keep me from breaking.

"Everything will be okay. You've made it this far. It's okay to have all your walls taken down."

"How dare you applaud my failure! How dare you assume to know who I am! Until a moment ago you had never been inside my head!"

"Oh sweet Stephanie, this is not my first time in your head. I have always been here, you needed someone to hold your hand. I always come when you let me, but I almost never can. You've been hurt so many times that you no longer trust me to have free reign, you always ran."

"But the demons, the noises, the constant sound I must have, why would I need all that if I had you instead?"

"Because you don't like to be alone, and the silence can be too much. It is okay that you dampen the demons with as many noises as possible. But sometimes they enter, and you have no choice but to listen, they hurt you and break you so that I have a chance to get in." There it is. All out in the open. How can someone be so messed up that their demons are the only thing that grants access to the one thing that can help them?

"Thanks, I guess, for filling the silence. I think I would get lost in my own head if I was left alone in the dark. Isolated." The voice no longer speaks, and the sounds all return. The patter of rain against the window, the rumble of the refrigerator, the cracking of my bones as I twist and stretch, the demons a meager whisper as noise once again fills my head.

The silence is refreshing. The silence is a comfort. Of all the billions of people in this world, the silence is my only friend.