Imagine there is someone playing a trumpet, right behind you. They are nearly always there. Sometimes the mouth of their trumpet is just right up to your ear, and it’s so loud you feel like you’re standing beneath a waterfall. Sometimes they are suddenly gone and it’s marvelously quiet, and you feel so calm you think, maybe the trumpet never even existed? But it always comes back, and you can’t control it anyway. Mostly though, they’re there and they’re playing noise in your ear.
You’re very used to it by now, but the effects are still pretty bad. You get distracted enough to walk into things, bang your head. Drop things or spill them. You know you need to do your taxes, or send an email, but you think, I’ll just wait until the trumpet’s stopped. If it stops for even just a half hour, that will give me the space I need to work on this. You want to have sensitive conversations, but with a trumpet sounding in your thoughts it can be difficult. Don’t worry, you still manage. Cleaning up is hard; you get forgetful and tired when there is a trumpet herding you mindlessly from room to room. You haunt the house trying to remember what it was. You wonder if ghosts are just people being chased by eternal noise and trying to remember what was on the menu for dinner.
Afterwards you feel tired because you didn’t manage to eat or drink on time. Afterwards the trumpet player plays with extra volume to make up for lost time. Sometimes they are just quiet and you get things done easily. You’re glad they need a break too sometimes.
People wonder why you don’t try just a little harder. A what, a trumpet? In your ear? Are you sure You seem fine. Everyone has days like that. It turns out others cannot see the trumpeter. It turns out most other people do not even have one. They are allowed to pass the day in a silence threaded through with the pacing of their own thoughts.
