The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike, and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn't just a fiction; it's part of our physical body, and our souls exist in space and are inside us, like the teeth in the mouth. It can't forever be violated with impunity.
Boris Pasternak, from Words Which Apply to Us As Well As Russia
I have hundreds of voice memos to myself, from 2018 to 2022.
the last one stops in 2022, sometime in May. then there’s a 3 year gap.
I have wanted to listen to them, but I haven’t wanted to.
I’m not sure how to survive them, really.
mentally.
but I tried listening to one, a few.
they are typically where I put my thoughts when I had too many to write in a journal.
“my hand can’t keep up with my thoughts.”
I have some memory of recording them, or some of them, so I know what’s going to be in there.
sounds of nature. sounds of walking, because I recorded most of them walking. some sounds of talking to people, because I sent voice memos that way, and I recorded a lot of interviews for work. “man on the street.” woman on a bench.
another woman — me — sitting on another type of bench, a pew in a church.
some in my dorm room, recorded while half falling asleep.
sounds of “room tone,” the ambient tone of a room, used in audio stories and for radio to splice tape together and make it sound natural.
talking about tinnitus.
thoughts after flights.
voice memos to my ex.
voice memos about my ex.
material for the podcast I worked on last.
the last one.
so many I could make an audio documentary of the behind the scenes of making an audio documentary
an interview with my mom when I had to interview her for work
bird sounds
walking
lots of fear
anxiety
lots of gratitude
lots of giving thanks
lots of just “whatever is on my mind”
sometimes I don’t want to ever listen to them at all. and I haven’t
like I want to keep them, archive them somewhere, put them in a vault. just preserve and protect her.
even if I never listen
sometimes I get so mad at her. I blame her for so much. and she’s here because people hurt her, over many years, and those years in particular.
and then she hurt herself, because she got hurt, and all of it culminated and hurt her physically, and she thought her life was over already, and she had failed to protect it. failed to protect herself. so she shouldn’t anymore, it failed anyway. the entire endeavor. the tortuous endeavor of protecting a life and trying to build one at the same time, while everyone is not very concerned with protecting you. actively hurting you, intentionally and unintentionally. and you are hurting yourself— usually unintentionally.
almost all of the time, unintentional.
I listened to a few.
my voice changes in each. some I’m tired, confused, exhausted. in one I fall asleep, and several minutes later, wake up and turn it off.
I didn’t skip ahead, I just listened. her breathing, the box fan. I know where I was, I can picture it, and I remember recording it. how it felt. heavy. and my body heavy and heart heavy and eyes heavy so my voice got softer and softer and trailed off into sleep and soft breathing and ambient noise of a box fan in my window.
another of me walking, seemingly aimlessly, as I did a lot in 2022. just aimless walking. the walking was aimless. walking out the door just to walk, not knowing why or where. I’ll figure it out.
that’s what I was walking for. to try to figure it out, and I felt stuck, and going in circles. at least one thing needed to move forward, to move, to change. even if it was just my legs and the scenery.
I go back and forth —
do I forgive myself? do I not?
do I blame myself? do I not?
do I blame her? how can I forgive her?
all this wondering, worrying —
she got it wrong.
she didn’t get it right.
she chose wrong.
she should have done something.
something different.
I go back and forth —
Will I ever listen to them?
will I ever be able to listen to them?
can I handle them?
I decided to, last night. impulsive, but somehow intuitively.
I never trusted my intuition.
and I had very few people to ask.
no girlfriends or big group of girls or even guys.
just a boyfriend, a therapist, my mom, whatever I could research and try to learn and apply what I learned, by myself with no supervision and no one to talk about it with but the aforementioned people, now and then. but I needed more than that
so I started talking to God. and myself. and God, and myself. and lots of talking to myself, may as well have been talking to myself.
I reconverted in 2018.
and so many memos are me trying to answer the question
am I doing the right thing?, big picture
am I doing the right thing?, little picture,
am I doing what God wants me to do?, bigger picture
this is what I’m doing right now — taking a walk
I don’t know what to do
about school, career, relationships
then the topics shift
“I don’t know what’s happening
I don’t know what to do”
so I took a walk
or recorded myself in my room
talking out loud
addressed to no one, a note to myself, addressed to God
who else did I have?
who else could even say anything, even if they understood?
who else that I wouldn’t scare?
be too much for?
“this again, you again?”
I don’t know how I did it
listen to them, I mean
like a documentary but it’s a horror documentary and you know how it ends
“get out, don’t do that, don’t, it’s a trap, run”
but that’s what she was trying to figure out
what to do, what not to do, whether to stay or go, where to go
she got it wrong
somehow, despite it all — she got it all wrong
walked into all the traps and through trap doors and fell in bear traps and didn’t know how to get out
trapped
how do you get out of a bear trap?
I did it the way I’ve done everything
I just did it
I just did it
a few, before I needed to sleep
“don’t overdo it, don’t do it all at once, just what you can, just what you want to do, just what you have energy for, capacity for, can handle”
and it did it alone
who was I going to talk to?
who could, who would, even have anything to say?
what could anyone say?
I don’t even know what to say
whipped back and forth
between
she tried so hard
tried so hard to save herself
save herself
save herself
save herself
tried to save
but then I feel again, hear again
“and she failed.”
it didn’t “slip away,”
she threw it away.
and if it slipped away, she let it
she was wrong.
she got it wrong.
how do you get so much wrong?
how do you get so much wrong, and yet listen to yourself try so hard to get it right, because she took it as seriously as life and death?
because she knew only she could decide and choose what to do
and she couldn’t get it wrong
no room for error
whether that was real or imagined, anxiety, conditioning, upbringing, a habit, a temperament, a preoccupation
worrying was my main occupation, my second full time job
and sometimes my full time job
before I had one
and whether it was real or imagined,
it came true.
and the “no room for error” competes with “human error” competes with “what was the error, was there one error? were they all errors?”
with “how could I have thought anymore about this? I really tried, I tried so hard to make the right choices”
human error
I’m just a human
but that’s the point
we are human
not superhuman
and all it takes sometimes is one error
there were many errors
but you really only need one
and sometimes it’s someone else’s
someone else’s error
sometimes it’s yours
but you usually don’t get it wrong on purpose
but
but
there was one time
one time
I go back and forth
I love you, I want to protect you. you deserved better, you deserve love and happiness, health, you deserve —-
security
if nothing else
and then I hear
she’s why we lost everything
but why was there no room for error?
why was it life or death?
why did she have to work so hard, and why is life so fragile?
she created neither condition
she had control of neither
that’s why she tried so hard to control
and then she lost it
but if she could control so little
then she didn’t lose it all
some was taken
some was never given in the first place
what do we do?
“So what do we do now? and what do we do with each other? it’s just you and me
and I can’t forgive you, but I want to. and how could you ever forgive me, if you knew what happened? how it turned out? what I did, in response to how it turned out? all the things I can’t do anymore? would you even forgive me?”
I’ve been asking so long if I forgive her
I don’t know if I’ve ever asked if she’d forgive me
“I don’t know.
I don’t know.
but I didn’t abandon you.
I kept you, even if I couldn’t visit you, listen to you.
I don’t know what the future holds. but I’m still here. I won’t leave you. and I wish I could help you. and I hear you,
I’m listening.
I’ll try. I’m going to try to listen.
I don’t know ….
but you’re still in my phone for a reason.
there must be part of me that wants to keep you.
keep you safe.
preserve you.
hold you.
be there for you.
who else was there?
who else is there?
it’s just you and me.
me, my old self,
and an iPhone.
I kept you because — whether I forgive you or not,
you deserve to exist.
somewhere, you deserve to exist.
I don’t have to forgive you or like you or love you or agree with you to feel you deserved to just exist.
you can still exist, here.
not in my thoughts and judgements
or anyone else’s.
just as you were.
you deserve to exist. be kept. kept safe.
I won’t hurt you. I won’t erase you. delete you.
you can stay here.
I’ll give you a place to stay.
because you should have somewhere to go, somewhere to stay.
even if —
you deserve that much.
that’s all I can give you, anyway, besides forgiveness.
but
that’s all I can say for now.
stay.
not “don’t go”
but
you can stay.
I’m offering you a place to stay.
as long as I have you, have my iPhone, you are safe. secure. no one can hurt you, as long as I’m here. no one can hurt you anymore. you can’t hurt yourself. I’m here, you’re here, I’m not
Toy-like people make me boy-like
Toy-like people make me boy-like
////
boy-like people make me toy-like
boy-like people make me toy-like
Nicer than the bird up in the tree top
Cheaper than the chip inside my laptop
All the variations you could do with me
Nicer than the girl up in your mind,
just apologized to a friend who I hadn’t texted back in several days.
I always say something similar.
“I had zero brain cells to mobilize.”
I’m learning a lot about pain, exhaustion, grief and how it impacts cognitive capacity and limiter energy reserves.
“I have one brain cell.” “two brain cells.” “operating on three brain cells.”
“I had zero brain cells to mobilize,” I told him.
I don’t know why these are all separate capacities: writing, reading, comprehending, reading comprehension, responding. listening to someone talk. keeping up, like very slow ping pong, with messages and DMs.
ping.
pong, when I can lift the paddle and volley it across the tiny net.
sometimes they come back, or new players join, and now there are ping pong balls all over the ground. this is great! people want to play with me. but… which ball to walk to, pick up, send back over the net?
the Internet.
I’ve now limited myself to Tumblr, text messages, Pinterest periodically and the occasional email. nothing ever there, just to check. some bill. some reminder. they are all now mostly just reminders in some form. I could probably stop checking. but now and then, a tiny fear. am I missing something?
I know I’m missing out on a lot. my email gives me FOMO but not fear, more like just… MO.
communicating is a different skill. perhaps because it’s incoming information I cannot anticipate, new information often. even just casual. often evokes an emotion, or requires emotional intelligence. even for the casual. sometimes even the chit chat.
I don’t want to have such few brain cells, and to ration them this way.
my writing isn’t even what it used to be. it’s all mostly stream of consciousness. no drafts, no reporting, no fact checking, no brainstorming. absolutely none of that.
no rewriting, sometimes no re-reading. a minor tweak. a minor addition. fix a typo. cosmetic, incidental. “oh, remembered this other thing. like this word better, this phrase. I can make it slightly better.”
no agonizing over anything, no thinking about it too much. thinking as much as I want, with the limits of what I can spend. not returning and perfecting. that would take up the brain cells and keep them from being used on something new instead of something slightly better, which is the best I can do. the most I can give. “moving on. good enough. that’ll have to do. it exists now, in some form. next.”
no storm. just a stream. a nice easy float downstream. just go with the flow. write it down as I float downstream. sometimes a flood. sometimes drops. teardrops. let them flow, too. fight nothing, resist no emotion, let it be. let it go away on its own. pop up on its own. it’s own ping pong. remember, process. remember.
I think that’s it. I think that’s what takes up most of the cognition and cognitive energy.
processing.
even reading a message is processing. processing the information. messaging can be a process. back and forth, back and forth. I get through one and a new one returns. I’m glad to see it, but I sometimes “mark as read, mark as unread” in my mind. there’s no unread function on tumblr, but there is on iMessage.
I try to not leave on Seen. Delivered. smiled. appreciated. cherished.
but I take my time. I have to.
brain cells generating….. loading …. loading ….
nap. eat some nuts. fruit. cheese. caffeine. hydrate.
loaded. +3 health. +3 brain cell.
I don’t look it up. I don’t research or try to find some scientific reason different processes I used to categorize simply as “brain power” all now seem like separate categories.
it would take too many brain cells to do that. I am already using my reserves. must prioritize.
and researching, obsessing over answers never did me much good. I make my own up, my own educated guesses.
do I really need to know? will it change anything? will it bring back or replenish my brain cells?
I doubt it. I don’t know for sure. I just doubt, and that’s enough of a reason not to, for me. this version of me.
source? me. my brain.
my theory.
citation not needed.
plus, no one’s paying me for that anymore. I don’t even assume anyone reads it. it’s mostly for my utility and pleasure ave purpose. I’m not paid to persuade anymore, to verify or support or define. I couldn’t do all that, even if I wanted to. to get paid. otherwise I would, for some spending money. money to spend. but I’d need more brain cells for that. I can’t spend what I don’t have.
I was once a researcher. paid and unpaid. I researched everything. professional, amateur. enthusiast.
I remembered as I wrote my friend, about my zero brain cells,
my dad had a nickname for me.
The Brain.
I guess in some ways I still am. I try to keep it active, within these limits, because the body can’t be.
I guess I try to keep myself active. try to keep The Brain active.
I’d like to go on a walk and pick up pinecones. several streets, a few blocks down, there’s a wide street lined with pine trees. all kinds of trees, but known — famous— for its Christmas trees.
lots of acorns and pinecones, big ones and fat ones and rotund ones, ones that are sturdy and one that are oblong and flat, already crushed. and ones so small, so tiny, they look like acorns.
pine needles, all the time. even evergreens turn brown, orange, tan, when the pine needles fall and die.
so many, it was like a forest floor, because there were so many pine trees. a thin strip of forest floor between private property and the paved road. so many it was sort of soft to step on, like a bed of not roses, but pine needles.
it’s a satisfying sound of tiny rocks, pebbles, gravel, the crunch of pine needles. the sound changed depending on what you were stepping on. you could hear yourself entering little micro sound environments every few steps. the soft crunch of needles, the hard crunch of tiny rocks, the crisp crunch of hard packed sand. now and then to avoid something, like a puddle, mud, a fallen branch. you’d have to walk in the road, if no cars were coming. and usually there weren’t. it’s not a busy street. pretty quiet. quiet enough to hear the change of sound as you stepped, and the pavement was the quietest. like for a moment it would go silent even as there was action, like a missing soundtrack, then back to crunch. the softest crunch was the needles.
no matter what season, doesn’t need to be fall. they fall at any time, all the time, and they never get up, because there’s too many, and they fall between the road and a property, this liminal space that doesn’t belong to the homeowner, and not quite the pavement of the road. too long of a stretch, one long stretch, except for one section with cross traffic, but you cross and it keeps going, one long stretch.
houses and homes, but they aren’t the main attraction. the trees are.
especially during Christmas, when all the trees have lights. the city comes and strings lights.
but no one rakes or sweeps, rarely does anyone clear their portion, in front of their home.
not really bothering anyone, and typically they’re driving, pulling out of a driveway and heading down the pavement to some destination.
the don’t have to think much about the needles and the pebbles and the pinecones.
but I don’t drive, I never did, and it was a peaceful place to walk. about 40 minutes in one direction, then back.
I wasn’t going anywhere, I didn’t have a destination. that was the destination. just to walk up and down. “just going up and back.”
nothing much ahead, just more houses in a mostly straight, long line, disappearing into the horizon. not looking back, behind me.
if anything, looking at my feet. so I don’t trip on anything, on any fallen branches or raised pavement where roots are growing. rocks and mud and sand and puddles.
“watch your step.”
multiple terrains on one walk, sometimes every few houses, a new terrain.
I’d pick up interesting pinecones as an occasional souvenir. if it looked good, looked sturdy, particularly robust, looked ornamental, or looked like an acorn. tiny. put it in my pocket.
the bigger ones, though. just had to carry it.
walk in, put it somewhere. find a place to put it.
“that would look nice. this is good. right here.”
a free decoration. a naturally occurring souvenir. a keepsake. kept for the sake of nothing in particular, just that it looks nice.
something to bring back from up and back. something that was outside is now inside. was on the ground, now on a shelf, a table. can’t bring them all, but I could carry these ones, this one. like picking a Christmas tree to display at home but it’s just the pinecone.
not all the time, not each trip. just if something caught my eye. felt good in my hands and could fit in one.
sometimes I’d pick one up, give it a closer look, and set it back down. sometimes it looked good, but then you’d turn it over and it would be crushed or crumbling or too dirty.
I wasn’t trying to save them all, anyway. just to preserve now and then if I thought one or two looked neat, like a piece of art. or so tiny it shouldn’t get stepped on. would be a shame.
something to remember the walk by.
we have a few, still. a souvenir from another time. another life. just up the road.
I remember I woke up with a tiny pain in my ear, like an ordinary ear infection. but out of nowhere. where did that come from? what is that? I mean, I know what it is, but how? where would I have gotten an ear infection? it wasn’t there when I went to sleep.
ear infections are not idiopathic. they come from somewhere, something. they are a signal that something needs attention. something happened. something became infected, something infected, presumably, and now it’s telling you to tend to it. and usually they don’t go away on their own, usually they require antibiotics. without them, they can get much worse.
“whatever you have, it’s not an ear infection. we’re not putting you on any more antibiotics. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not an ear infection.”
not an end, not the expected end. and end in its own way, because when it ended, something new began. “this isn’t over yet.” we don’t even know what this is. I thought the doctor would know. I thought I knew. I expected it would be easy, solved before I got there. just confirm my suspicion. not even a suspicion, I know. I know what an ear infection feels like. this will be more complicated that I thought, and there is no clear next step.
whatever it was, surely it had started in my sleep.
overnight.
and surely even then, something infected something, at some point, and it only reached an observable point, sometime in sleep, and was waiting when I woke up. waiting for me to perceive it.
****
I went to bed one night, and after things had quieted down — no more sound of the television, no more sound of any voices, when everything had been turned off and I crawled into bed. glasses off. lights off. no one else in the room. nothing making noise, nothing emitting noise.
in bed, in the quiet of bed time, I heard it for the first time.
“what’s that?”
I jolted up.
“what is that?”
a ring. a sound. but from where? nothing is on. it’s quiet.
no one to ask. “do you hear that?”
I got up. left the room. checked appliances. the microwave, the cable box. the thermostat. not even the air was on, no beep or buzz from the thermostat.
I returned to the room, sat on the bed. confused.
I had an idea.
put my hands over my ears.
a sudden terror. no, no —
it became louder. not louder, but more clear. it became clear:
“it’s coming from me.”
there was no external sound, no external stimulus.
what could have caused it?
what did I do?
did I do something wrong?
it was there, and now it’s here. something caused it. it must have been me, something I did.
I don’t know how I slept that night.
I knew not long after. the tests confirmed it. could only be so many things.
tinnitus.
perfect hearing. no hearing damage. it must be the other cause:
unknown.
nothing I did wrong, or nothing I could have prevented.
“it just happens.”
“reasons we don’t understand.”
but I wonder, I always have wondered —-
there must have been a moment.
some moment.
where it wasn’t there, and then it was there.
audible, but I didn’t hear it.
the end of life as I knew it, as I had known it, but I didn’t know it yet.
I wondered,
what was I doing? what had I been doing at the time, totally unaware? oblivious that this would be the last time? the final hour, the final minute, the final second of silence? and I didn’t know, because it was covered up by sound—the sound of whatever I was doing. and I just continued doing what I was doing.
a final moment of silence, and I didn’t even get to hear it.
and by the time I laid down to sleep, the new sound had been there all along, there the whole time. it hadn’t been there when I woke up. but it was there when I went to bed. starting at some point during the day, or even the night time, waiting for bed time.
waiting for me, waiting until I was alone. waiting for me to hear it.
sometimes tinnitus feels like a community. like not an identity, an inheritance, or a history, or something someone gave you and said “you are this. this is who you are.” but this is what you have, have now, and you are a person who has tinnitus. not something you earned and became, and not something anyone can take away.
that’s usually the problem.
a kind of secret society.
they usually call us “tinnitus sufferers.” I always had things I felt I suffered, but they didn’t have a name, or a community. the lack of community is sort of what made it a kind of suffering. I knew someone, somewhere, must feel the same way. but I didn’t know where to find them. except maybe online. but they all had different experiences, just ones that created a similar feeling. the feeling was the same, the experience wasn’t. sometimes you couldn’t even name the feeling, or any one feeling. some combination of keywords of feelings and experiences got us to the same place. some of them had names for their experience. I didn’t. “could be this, could be that. maybe not. unclear.” doesn’t meet the diagnostic criteria, but “has features.” some Venn diagram. another mismatch. another almost. another “no way to know.”
but tinnitus — even though it sounds different, and for some it’s louder or quieter, more intrusive, more “habituated — it was the first community I felt that I belonged to but didn’t want to be part of. well, I belonged to a lot of communities I don’t want to be part of. but not places or groups or identities — one built around an experience.
a sensory experience.
sometimes, community is the first thing you find. the first thing you find when you’re looking for an answer.
that’s how I did.
keywords. search.
r/Tinnitus.
“is this …… tinnitus?”
am I in the right place?
it was scary. story after story. twelve years, twenty years. two weeks. two days.
despair. ideation.
“please tell me I’m not in the right place.”
“I’m used to it.” “doesn’t bother me.”
at one point, I belonged to despair. now I belong to “I’m used to it.” can’t quite say “doesn’t bother me.” and I have no God to thank, but thank God I never belonged to ideation. “those poor souls.”
no one — that I remember — said “it’s gone.” maybe now and then, after a concert or something.
but sometimes-often-that’s how it started.
then the regret. if only I had been more careful . anticipated. worn protection. ear protection. the self-blame. “did I do this to myself?”
in the same place, still belonging, to the people who “did nothing wrong.” idiopathic. “it just happens.” “we don’t always know. sometimes there is no reason.”
surely there’s some reason, but not one you can know.
just something, somewhere, went wrong.
you could be so different, but still belong.
a kind of negative belonging that became a positive.
no right way or wrong way to belong, just some ways better than others, and better or worse was in no one’s control. it all depended on the sufferer, which depended on the sound.
not a nod, like, “you too.” but a recognition. “me too.”
sometimes my tinnitus feels like a companion and not an antagonist. not a friend, but a fellow traveler, going the same way. sometimes it feels like something steady, the only thing steady, besides pain. but it was before pain. it was here before.
like my tinnitus is the older sibling. habituated, gotten used to. not ideal, maybe still unwanted, but calm now. not, “I was here first.”
but “you too?”
they have different personalities, different temperaments. but still share a home, and we all share this home. the tinnitus is reserved, an intrusion but unchanging and predictable. the pain is loud, difficult, thrashing, petulant. won’t be soothed, and you’ve tried everything, and you can’t stop it from screaming, can’t get it to stop crying, can’t calm it down, and it never calms itself down, the cries never become exhausted, and it never exhausts itself into sleep. sometimes prevents you from sleeping.
and every day you must listen to its demands on little sleep, and wake up to its cry, the first demand of the day, the first fire to put out, but you can’t do anything about it and it can’t be extinguished. like tinnitus once was, when it was younger. but it grew out of it, and we’re passed it now. the tinnitus is quiet and well-behaved in comparison. a witness to it all. doesn’t react, doesn’t intervene. it can’t. it just abides. ignores, best it can. related, but act nothing alike. you’d never know they both were mine. don’t look like me either. or anyone else or anyone else’s.
“5, and 16 months.” almost a year and half, I’d say I’d asked their ages.
sometimes it feels less like two children to carry all day and I can’t put down, other times it feels like a screaming infant and the fellow traveler, on a plane or a train, and we’re all stuck on a one-way going somewhere, and we can’t get off, and instead of getting upset or confronting me about the noise, tinnitus just politely pretends to not hear it. or accepts there’s nothing it can do, and sees there’s nothing I can do.
the tinnitus didn't change because it matured. or because I did. it didn't change at all. it's been the same the whole time. only my response to it changed, over time, despite thinking my response would never change. that l'd never be able to have peace or make peace with it.
I don’t think pain can ever be habituated, no matter how old it gets. at least not this one. not mine, and I don’t think I have to wait for time to tell. I already know what it will say. but I can’t feel everyone’s pain, I only know my own. and even if I never get used to it, it can still change. it already has. it, too, started in one ear.
it too, started with — “what’s that?”
the tinnitus stayed in the ear. both ears, one more and than the other. the pain remains there, at the origin, but it spread outward, claimed new territory. and will claim more like it claimed what it’s already claimed — over time.
but sometimes when I’m tired of resisting, get too tired to try to not focus on it, I just focus on it. too tired to think thoughts, too tired to fight pain. to background, to focus on something.
I don’t want to belong to the chronic pain community. it scares me. I don’t look at things. I don’t see “use to it.” “doesn’t bother me.”
I don’t look. I don’t look it up.
I don’t need to look at anything for tinnitus.
I just need to listen. and I have to, anyway. that’s the whole point.
“you can never be inside someone else’s head.”
someone, somewhere.
not just online.
maybe not what they’re thinking.
and maybe not the precise sound or volume or intensity of what they hear.
I don’t know what it’s like in their head. but I have the same experience. at least one in common. a sense you can’t turn off, a sense of no control.
an equalizer, even if it’s unequal. a common denominator. what we have in common.
something only you can hear, even in the same room or place as someone else, a lot of people even. and you can explain it, put it in words, try to communicate. panic, even. cry. and they still wouldn’t hear it. still wouldn’t know what you know.
we’re in this together.
you too. some you. somewhere. everywhere. even if you’re not here. even when it’s just me.
and I don’t have to keep up or check in. no news, anyway. nothing to report. can pop in if I want, and we’re all still there. new people all the time that I don’t have to meet.
I can’t remember what it sounds like to not have it. for there to just be nothing. I try, but in my imagination, it just sounds wrong. not like relief, but disorientation. where am I? what do I grab onto?
like being lost at sea with only water in every direction.
like learning to walk again or something. like exploring unfamiliar or forgotten ground, but not with your legs or eyes but with your ears.
maybe I’d get used to it, the way I got mostly used to tinnitus. could, because it’s comparatively unobtrusive, compared to what it could be. but I’m not sure.
maybe if I had debilitating tinnitus — disabling — it would be like reaching shore. or teaching the surface and breathing again.
I imagine how it could feel that way.
but for me, it would feel like being pulled from the water and told to live on land again after 5 years at sea. or using lungs again instead of gills.
I wish I could be pulled from the horizonless sea of chronic pain. someone dragging me out. rescue. life guard. concerned citizen. hero. you hear stories sometimes, though. getting dragged under, too. I don’t want to pull anyone under, but I don’t want to be left at sea, but there’s also no rescue. just treading. staying above water. and I am forgetting what it felt like to walk on land, to be dry.
but with tinnitus, my tinnitus, it’s different. I am not sure I’d want to be rescued. or if I was, there’d be a lot of re-acclimation. processing. always remembering a sound that is there anymore. hearing it in my head but as a memory.
sometimes all I can try to imagine when I imagine what it sounded like before comes up as “empty.”
an emptiness. like white walls as white noise.
room temperature but it’s room tone. just you in the room, a very empty room.
listening for something. always scanning, listening for something because now there’s nothing, and nothing feels strange. waiting for something, because surely something eventually will.
with it, tinnitus is already there. something at least occupies space.
nothing sounds like it would sound strange.
scary, almost, sometimes I think.
not like the presumed normal sensory experience, but like a kind of sensory deprivation. almost unnatural.
or so I imagine.
I don’t remember.
I can’t even imagine what I used to know. which was once all I used to know.
my memory works like little flashes, often. I think most scenes are real. I know what happened and didn’t happen. at least the biographical details. this, this, then this. but everything that happened, every second and millisecond of every day, no, I don’t remember. too many flashes and seconds to remember everything.
I wish I could see it, sometimes, like a movie. or just a montage. an edit. many flashes at once, even if they are not in any order. a texture, a color, a frame. an object, a place. little things I see if I squint in my mind, flashes that come to me as they please. come and go.
a montage of that.
but then I think — I don’t know.
every flash is now imbued with some meaning it didn’t use to have.
don’t go there. don’t do that. don’t talk to them. don’t forget this. get out of there. you’re gonna lose this. you lost this. yes, even this. so simple. the best ones all are. beloved, beloved memory. no, no, it should never have happened. this should never have happened. why did you want this? this place? this person? this blew up. a happy memory became an omen, a lynchpin, a turning point. in a bad direction. and they all went in a bad direction. they are all omens, lynchpins. stop tape. “here.” but they can’t all be lynchpins, “the lynchpin,” that’s not what a lynchpin is. can’t all be wrenches in gears that kept going. kept going in the wrong direction.
sometimes I see memories that are not mine. flashes of a movie, a scene in a movie, a show, a series. that episode, that moment, that frame. black and white. color. black and white. color. film, movies. “I’d like to watch that again.” “read that again.
I see French coal mines from high school that I invented in my head, or imagined. from Emile Zola, from GERMINAL. I had never seen the inside of a coal mine. or France. I see a frame from 8 1/2, from Fellini. I see a frame of D’Est. Akerman. a waiting room, a terminal. I see myself, sitting in the seat, watching it, even if I didn’t ever see myself. I guess I never saw myself do something like that. I remember book covers, scenes from books, book stores, libraries.
a lot of things I imagined, couldn’t have imagined. had never seen before.
I see a countdown on MTV, I see a video on Subterranean. I see a bedroom. I see a computer, a manuscript. for my book. I was eleven. it was about turning 12, and how I wished I could be eleven again.
I see scenes of a chemistry class room, from a book about high school I read in high school. I never took chemistry, but I pictured it, pictured one, based off movies I had seen.
I wish I could see them again, but only the good ones. problem is, a lot of them are good ones, they are just bad now. most of them. most of them are bad now. nothing not imbued with some meaning, some memory, on top of the memory.
some now, only memories. I never thought something like that could only be a memory. a ray of sun in a tree, a ray of moon in another. a feeling, a sensation. a lack of one. no sensation. not numbness—neutrality. to not feel something, everything. to not feel this, to not feel everything at once, sometimes. the way it felt to do something, the way it felt to do nothing. and feel nothing while doing nothing.
How to Do Nothing. by Jenny Odell. I read it during the pandemic, to give me something to do. “I’d like to do something like that,” I thought while doing nothing. write a book like How to Do Nothing, be like Jenny Odell. now I think I could, but it would be a different book, and I don’t think anyone would publish it.
I wonder how long it would be. if I lined them all up and spliced them all together. every flash. I don’t remember footage, usually. just flashes.
my life, flashed before my eyes. my life before 2022. nothing after. I know what it looks like. one flash, two flashes, could be the whole movie, onward. a handful of flashes. flashes about flashes. remembering something, seeing a flash. feeling something about what I saw, sometimes different than how I felt in the flash. sometimes I feel the same.
I don’t remember many sounds. voices, snippets of songs, but not sounds. all the sounds encountered in a day. in a life. what something sounded like. maybe it would be a silent film. the first half and the last few years would sound the same.
“the echoes in my eyes, of all they used to see” usually don’t make a sound.
how much did we endure — I endure, but yes we — as a child, from -0 to 18+ — with shit that wasn’t ever addressed but just “prayed about.”
pray that we’d be safe or secure or that people hurting us would change — one specific person in particular — and while i admit material and financial constraints, the major intervention was to pray about it
often in Spanish and while huddling with my grandmother and holy water and a rosary and prayers and red faces and wailing and bowed heads and absolutely no other action
in Spanish to hide it from me
there was nothing to hide, I knew exactly what you were talking about
and whispering about and crying about
years and years and years of the same story and every year my Spanish got better
and every time I heard it, the story made less sense
and when there was one escape latch when I was still young, one opening, someone saying please, take it — you said no because you thought he would change if you just kept
praying about it
a decision you surely
prayed about
asking for an answer to prayer
at what point is the answer just “no”?
no I’m not going to help you with that
or no one is listening at all
and if money is constraining you so much maybe just don’t have kids you can’t afford because they’re not an accident they’re a “gift from God”
let me guess. “God will make a way”?
I remember this over and over and watching it and thinking “Jesus Christ, do something”
