sotto voce
I don’t know how to say this any other way, so here’s to being brutally honest.
I hear voices.
I don’t know when it started or why. It doesn’t happen all the time and I can’t recall the last time it did happen, but the last few nights when I’ve tried to fall asleep the voices returned.
A few years ago when we were still living at the old apartment I remember sleeping on the couch (because my mattress was so old and uncomfortable and for a while I didn’t have a room) and laying in the dark of the front room and suddenly I’m hearing voices. Not as if they’re standing next to me but more as if I’m recalling conversations from before. The only difference was the voices were unfamiliar as was the subject matter. It varied between a woman screaming incoherently in anger to calm conversations and laughter. There are children’s voices, men and women of all ages. Different inflections and accents. I rarely remember in the morning what they said, but I know I’m not imagining it. One difference between that and creating dialogue in my head (which I do often for writing and working out plots) is the fact that I’m consciously thinking about hearing the voices and the voices are still talking. I think I’d have to be a level two genius to pull off the mental gymnastics for that kind of hallucinating capabilities.
I know I mentioned this before to my mom, who basically just nodded and made appropriate murmuring sounds and I’m sure thought I was fabricating the whole thing or was too concerned her middle child went off the deep end to do anything more about it.
Last night was no different. I was thinking about it while trying to get to sleep, that maybe it’s a problem that I hear these voices, and where do they come from, and am I going insane? It’s never that they are speaking to me or addressing me, more so that I’m eavesdropping. They are never malevolent or even that scary—not even the ranting and screaming I hear, though that keeps me awake. And then as I calmed down and started to relax enough to slip into sleep, someone laughed and mentioned a large number and began talking about buying a house. I was irritated enough by it that I finally tuned it out and went to bed.
This morning after a few hours of sleep I once again was awake at 8 am, exhausted, my whole body aching and a headache to top it off. I texted the one person who I know I could tell without wondering if they’d think I’m effing psychotic and I asked if they ever had that happen to them. I was back in bed, drifting in and out of sleep for about forty minutes when I checked my phone and got a text saying yes, they know what I’m talking about. Whew. At least we can be crazy together.
I wouldn’t even know how to define what I experience enough to google it without running into an armchair diagnosis of “you are batshit crazy, seek professional help immediately.”
Perhaps the thing that bothers me most about it is that they aren’t talking to me. They aren’t commenting on things I’m doing or acknowledging me personally. But at the same time I have the overwhelming sense that they are speaking at me, knowing that I can hear them, and they want me to listen even though they have no words of wisdom, no dire warnings, nothing at all useful to me. Just mundane conversation.
It doesn’t happen every night. There are years between incidents. I just wish I knew what it was all about.
But maybe I just really am crazy.
