For as long as I can remember, I've talked to myself out loud when I was alone. Not because I had to, but because I couldn't stand the pressure of absolute silence.
As a child I had an old-style record player and a selection of records - both stories as well as songs - that I used to play over and over again. I am sure that it drove everyone around me up the walls, but it kept me out of their hair so they put up with it. I knew most of the records by heart, I could recite the long stories word for word along with the record or by myself, but I kept playing the records to stave off the silence.
As I got older I switched to cassette tapes, radio, and eventually CDs. It didn't matter what the sound was, as long as there was something burbling in the background. In college, my radio was as close to the door of my room as I could get it - as few steps as possible from the hallway into the silence before the announcer's voice filled the room. These days, it's TV or Pandora. The moment I come home, I flick the button on the remote. Maybe that's why I can't write at home. I can't concentrate with the TV on and I can't turn it off, petrified that once the silence falls, all I'll be left with is the clamor of my thoughts. And I fight so hard to push them to the back of my mind, to not let them rise to the surface that the inanity of TV is infinitely more welcome than the loss of that particular battle.
A couple of months ago I came across a song and fell in love. It took a few times of hearing it before I realized just how much I like it and then it was like a drug. I spent a couple of evenings just playing the song on a loop for hours. The song, in case you're wondering, is Mortal by Baskery and it's playing on a loop now as I'm writing this. As loud as I can stand it, drowning out the sounds of the cafe around me.
Listening to it now brings me back to the first time I fell for the song and therein lies the problem with my obsession with certain songs and pieces of music. As I fall in love with a particular piece of music it becomes inextricably linked with that bit of my life. It's like eating so much ice cream at once that you make yourself sick and then can never eat that flavor of ice cream again. It's a self-poisoning of sorts, but then I've never been good with moderation, my mother can testify to that first hand. It's an enduring source of wonderment to me that I never took up smoking or became addicted to alcohol or drugs.
But there is something that I'm addicted to... It's an addiction that I fight on and off multiple times each day, the more stressful the day, the harder the fight.
I look at the faint scar on my left forearm and shudder. So faint now...
It's a fight that I've lost before and will lose again. I hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment