Written in the silence I once filled with songs.
⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆
As a kid, music was everything to me. It was how I escaped. Singing helped me regulate my breathing, especially when I felt stress crept in. It was instinctive. I didn’t even have to think about it.
I never imagined I’d just… stop listening altogether.
⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆
At the time, it felt like a conscious choice. My headphones broke one day, and for 20 days, I didn’t have any way to listen to anything while I was outside and that alone was a massive shift, because for over a decade, I had never gone anywhere without something playing in my ears.
What I didn’t expect was how fast I got used to the silence. Except it wasn’t really silence. The outside world is loud, it’s just that I hadn’t realized how loud, because I had been canceling it out for so long. And the noise outside made everything worse. It triggered my paranoia and I started feeling anxious just being outdoors. Even after I got a brand-new headset, I didn’t feel better.
⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆
Now I get short of breath when I’m out, I panic. And oddly enough, I don’t want to listen to music anymore. Not when I’m outside. All I want is noise-canceling. Nothing else. Not music. Not voices. Just emptiness.
And now that I’ve been smoking for a while, neither my breathing nor my voice is the same. The way I used to sing? It doesn’t come out the same anymore. It feels weaker, like it’s not mine. That pushes me even further away from music.
I feel like I’ve started to resemble the headphones themselves. Tuned to block everything out, running on reverse frequencies. Avoiding sound instead of connecting to it. I feel like it’s not just the music I lost.
It’s something about me.
⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆
Cover art is by @rosioire. If this piece resonated with you, you might also like Did You Hear That? I Didn’t