Unspoken Voices

1989

A voice.

I’m sure it’ll speak soon.

Just penetrate the night to accost me.

I lie in bed, this worry growing into an obsession.

My anxiety has escalated. Clusters of panic attacks have ambushed me repeatedly. In the last session I had with my psychiatrist, he asked me if I’d heard voices. I told him no. Then, terrified, I asked him if I would. He said he didn’t know.

So it’s a possibility.

Of course it’s a possibility. If it wasn’t, he would’ve told me, No! You won’t hear my voices! He would’ve laughed and dismissed it. He would’ve assured me. But I saw the concern in his face and heard the probability in his words, and that combination has staked prime real estate in my head.

Here I am then, listening but not wanting to hear. The ringing in my ears is sharp. I don’t remember a time that hasn’t been there. My vision’s pixilated. The darkness isn’t black. It’s thousands of faint tiny multicoloured dots. When I’m sleepless, they thicken.

And I’m sleepless now.

Sleepless and fearing something will speak to me – some voice will say something. My friend Pete hears voices – horrible, destructive voices that tell him his roommate is possessed, that he should kill his roommate, that the devil masquerades in people you least expect, and things of that ilk.

He doesn’t know those voices aren’t real.

That’s what I worry most of all.

It’s not just that that a voice will speak to me, but that it’ll signify the point I can no longer discern reality, and then I’ll become like Pete.

Trapped in my suffering, unable to see a way out.

Unable to—

Something speaks.

I’m not sure what, but I hear it briefly.

I tense.

Hold my breath.

The calculations ramble along in my mind. If a voice has spoken to me, then it’ll speak again, seducing my mental health into an entirely new realm.

It’ll just be the way things are.

Like they might’ve always been.

So I don’t need the voice to speak again. I can dismiss a one-off as an aberration. Maybe I imagined it. That’ll do. Or misheard something else entirely. Or … whatever. But I could lock away an experience like that. It’ll be the place I never go – not willingly, at least.

Although there’ll always be the doubt.

But I also want to hear the voice again – not the voice from a possible psychosis, but some voice that’s identifiable. Maybe it was my parents. Their bedroom is next door to mine. Sometimes, they talk at night, and their voices warble through the wall. Or it could be one of my brothers in the kitchen or the living room. Or the neighbours. There are alternatives.

Real alternatives.

And a real alternative can rule out the other possibilities.

The worse possibilities.

I wait.

Still.

Tensed.

Still.

Still.

And there it is again.

Relief.

I can pinpoint the voice now – the neighbour’s house and mine are separated only by ten feet, my bedroom window almost parallel to their laundry. This is the neighbour in his laundry saying something to his daughter. That’s all. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but I can make out he’s saying it; I’ve heard this before, so the familiarity is identifiable and assuring.

With the fear punctured, reason lets me work that out.

I haven’t heard any other sort of voice.

I relax.

Start to breathe again.

And lie there.

Unsure what’ll claim me first.

Sleep.

Or a voice out of the night.