White Noise Voices

I can't help but wonder if this is what a breakdown feels like.

I sipped at my coffee and stared at the cursor blinking after the last word. It had taken almost an hour to write it and I didn't think there was anything else to say. I clicked "Save and Publish" and the shortest entry on my blog was posted. 

 

I leaned back against the chair and shut the monitor off. My coffee was cooling and I drank the last of it. I didn't want to do anything. I didn't want to see anyone. The house was dark now without the light of the monitor. It was morning but all of the blinds were closed and curtains drawn. A few days earlier I had been told I had turned my apartment into a cave and I realized I had and I didn't mind. Fans and the air conditioner kept it cool and filled it with white noise and sometimes I thought I heard voices or music in the hum and static and sometimes I couldn't hear myself think in it. I sat at my desk. I paced the floor. I figured I was waiting for something. Some revelation, or reconciliation, or redemption. I found none of those things though and I sat at my desk and I paced the floor and my apartment had become a cave.

I had turned my phone off and hid it somewhere after a few bottles of wine a few days ago. I couldn't remember where I put it or why I did it. I assumed it was for the best and didn't try to find it. Dishes didn't pile up because there was nothing to eat. No one was buying stories. No checks were coming in. In the back of my mind I had reasoned that this was the last great chapter in my life. Twenty nine years old. Alone and sinking into some mad complacency in some dark corner of some nothing town and okay with it all. A part of me was willing to surrender, and many more parts already had and I couldn't see a problem with it.

I laid on my bed and looked up at the ceiling tiles. A brown water stain had been growing above me for the past couple of months and despite my apathy I dreaded the idea of wet mold-covered ceiling tiles and stale water crashing down onto me in the middle of the night. I didn't dread it enough to fix it or call the landlord though. I assumed it would happen but it wasn't happening then and that is all that mattered.

I tried to sleep.

I can't help but wonder if this is what a breakdown feels like.

 

I couldn't.

 

It kept repeating in my head.

I can't help but wonder if this is what a breakdown feels like.

 

I can't help but wonder if this is what a breakdown feels like.

 

I can't help but wonder if this is what a breakdown feels like.

 

I can't help but wonder if this is what a breakdown feels like.  

 

I wondered if this was my moment of clarity. My revelation, or reconciliation, or redemption. Recognizing it for what it might be and telling the world around me. Reaching out to it. Explaining myself. I wondered why I had even been posting to my blog in the first place. What was the point? It seemed now like I was certainly reaching out in my own way and I decided I wouldn't post anymore. I didn't need help. I didn't want help. I wanted to sleep and dream and become the darkness and the white noise and the cave itself.I laid on my bed and stared at the ceiling tiles and waited for the ceiling to collapse onto me.