1.3

I had always had voices in my head. Usually my own telling me to do some things or off on a fantasy somewhere. There was always noise there all the time unless I blocked it out. Block it out with alcohol, block it out with drugs, block it out with LOUD FUCKING MUSIC block it out with something. Anything. The voices always came back. I had kind of gotten used to it. Years and years and years this had been going on. I wondered if everyone was like this or it was just me. 

On the day the sun didn’t rise the voices went away. It was silent while it was dark. Nothing there. Not hearing the voices made me think I was going mad. Silence. I could hear the wind and it scared me. I could hear the sound of the drones as they flew about. Had they always been there? I don’t remember noticing them.

The sun stayed away for a while and so did the voices. Then the sun came back. The voices also came back but they weren’t my own. They were other peoples. 

At first a whisper in the distance. Someone thinking that a coffee in a coffee shop was too expensive but reaching out to buy it anyhow. People wondering if they should make a dental appointment or stay with the person they were with. Someone worrying about the fact they were no longer sleeping and no longer had the need to sleep.  

And they got louder and louder and louder until even the LOUD FUCKING MUSIC couldn’t be heard over the sound of the mundane. What had started as whispers now made me want to scream.

I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t function. It was like being hit in the face with a velvet hammer coming from all sides at once. I couldn’t not do anything either as the voices were still there. I drank and I drank and I looked in the desk drawer for an ecstasy tablet that might have fallen down in there at some point. I painted and I painted and someone else painted. I reset the clocks.

Nothing just endless voices saying nothing and being drowned out by other endless voices also saying nothing. Infinite people shouting into the void wanting to be heard. No-one listening. But me. Me hearing it all. Like Instagram in my head. 

I didn’t know what to do. I had enough issues of my own without having to listen to everyone else on the planet worrying about what they were eating or what to watch on Netflix that night because there was just too much choice.

Then I heard the girl who was going to kill herself. I heard why she was going to kill herself and I realised I wasn’t alone and could actually do something about it. That’s when I went really mad.