The Only One That Hears it is You
Of course I hear it right away, just like every morning. But, just like most mornings, I don’t even realize that I hear it at first. It’s there (of course) as it has been so many mornings already.
It’s the early hours of the morning. I’m awake. Those sometimes-blissful moments when you wake up before the alarm and get to bask in the comfort of sleep for fifteen more minutes.
I flip my pillow to the cold side without thought. It is a reflex—especially in the heat of the summer that has finally arrived.
The chill is good against my hot face. It’s one of those “special pillows,” not feather but not exactly memory foam either. Can’t remember what Alison called them when she explained how we needed to spend three-hundred bucks on a new pillow set. But now I am glad that I caved in. It absorbs some of the beads of sweat that had accumulated in the heat of the night. Part of me already knows that the night is over. It is morning. But still far too early to be awake.
The air smells good. I notice that, somewhere in my barely-conscious state. It isn’t the pillow case though. Alison’s hair, especially the smell of that new shampoo that smelled just like the cereal Fruity Pebbles for some reason, is right in my face. But in a good way. Her head is close enough for the smell to be potent, but not too potent. And also far enough away that I’m not inhaling strands of hair as I breathe.
I want to pull her close. Spend these fifteen minutes with some good old-fashioned skin-to-skin spooning. But I’m too tired to go through the trouble. Still too mostly-asleep to bother. Resign to just reach out with my leg. Her legs are smooth and warm. It’s nice.
Good enough.
The blanket is heavy. The world outside our house is silent—still asleep. Of course I hear it right away, just like every morning. But, just like most mornings, I don’t even realize that I hear it at first. It is there though, (of course) as it has been so many mornings already.
It was weird—the first, like, eleven times I heard it, I don’t think I ever noticed it. The noise.
Or if I did it was so easily rationalized that I just brushed it off. It was rationalized and put away before it was even an acknowledged thought. Just the fridge. Humming. Buzzing. Just the AC going. Just a car outside. Down the road. There’s a trillion things that make those kinds of noises. Even in the suburbs. A dull, ringing, buzzing sound is nothing special.
But eventually it gets annoying.
Is annoying even the right word for it? At a certain point, when you hear it every FUCKING morning, without fail, you take notice. You start to look around your house for what is making the sound. It’s just a process of elimination you know? That sound has to be coming from something. So, you just need to figure out what the hell it is, and fix it or throw it away, or smash it with a fucking hammer until it stops making that sound.
That humming sound.
So that’s exactly what I did the first couple of mornings that I heard the sound. I mean, after I realized that I was actually hearing some sort of sound. It would have started a few months ago by now. A few days go by where I hear it in the morning. It isn’t anything all that bad. Which is insane to think about now as I lay in bed and begin to realize that I’ve been hearing it the entire time I’ve been awake. This morning: it devours my entire attention. And more-so the more that I pay attention to it.
But when it started, it was easily ignored. I could even fall back asleep. You hear so many sounds, you’d have to think that something like ninety-nine percent of them don’t even register to your attention. They are just white noise. And white noise is even comforting—at least to us modern people.
For many (I’d say myself included), the lack of at least a decent amount of white noise is actually unsettling. We need it. It’s comforting. My baby girl Sara, she’s finally sleeping in the crib in her own room down the hall (thank God), but when she was born we would always play some white noise to help her get to sleep. Some rain sounds. Or some ocean waves. Even just static. Anything would work. But if we did nothing, the silence drove her more crazy.
The same thing happens with people who have ADHD. Now, I don’t know how much of this is pseudo-science or just placebo. But I’ve heard many times that using some white noise can help with focus a great deal. I don’t personally have ADHD but as a computer programmer I’ve used the aid of various forms of white noise to help when it was crunch time on a project. And placebo or not, it most certainly helped me.
But this sound? It’s not white noise. It’s not something that fades away into the background. It isn’t something that can be ignored. It comes to the front and center of your attention until it’s the ONLY thing that you can hear. And it’s doing it to me now. Slowly building in its intensity.
But it isn’t really. It’s always the same tone. At the same level. At the same pitch. It never changes. Maybe... pulses a little. But it doesn’t get louder.
No.
What happens is that you just pay attention to it. You realize that you’re hearing it. And basically once you notice it, you’re done. That’s it. You can never unnoticed it. Your fate is sealed.
At that point, your options are: (and these are only the methods that I’ve tried so far) to drown out the sound of The Hum with something else, something louder that preferably will not keep you awake. Plug in some headphones and play some soothing (but loud) music or something. Podcasts and audio books have too much dead space in them. The Hum seeps through those cracks. So don’t try those. It’s gotta be something with consistency and rhythm to it.
If that doesn’t work, try booze. You get drunk enough, you could sleep through an earthquake. But this option is not sufficient for long term. And I’d also suggest avoiding smoking weed or anything like that. You might think that they help you relax. But that stuff only heightens your senses, and your awareness. It will amplify The Hum to unbearable levels.
You could also try just turning the TV on, and turning the volume up. But that won’t work too well if you’re sleeping with someone that doesn’t want that—which is my case.
Lastly you could just try to fill your environment up with as much white noise that you can. Turn on the ceiling fans. Run water in the faucets. Turn on the bathroom fan. Let the AC run. The stuff for babies. Inject it all in. But even then it doesn’t help really. It’s like The Hum is coming from inside of your own ears. So the distance that the external white noise has to travel ruins it as an alleviation.
Ear plugs. Those work. They block it out. At least a little. But in my experience, The Hum still finds a way to seep through even those. It seeps through everything.
And it’s always there.
Only in the mornings.
I slowly start to notice the noises around me, as I lay there in the heat and begin hearing the dull low buzzing sound in my ears.
The fan spinning overhead. There is a slight creaking noise every rotation. As well as the two dangling chains knocking against each other. Alison’s slow rhythmic breathing. Blessedly still in a deep sleep. No clue how early it is. But still I envy the sleep. The hours have been siphoned away from me for months now. An hour here. Several hours there. Catch up one day but lose the ground (and then some) the next. It is beginning to wear on me. My eyes are always heavy.
Death by a thousand cuts.
I can hear the rain sounds coming from the baby monitor. I hear the sound of baby Sara stirring for a moment. Then back to sleep.
The Hum doesn’t bother them. It doesn’t wake them up. Only me. Why only me?
It’s a frequency thing, I’m sure. Like a dog whistle.
Maybe I could just blast my ears, I’m thinking in a flash of desperation as the noise slowly builds in my attention. Go to a bunch of rock concerts and hold my head against the amps until my ears are damaged enough that the frequency is no longer able to be heard?
But if that doesn’t work? I’ve just permanently damaged my hearing for nothing.
I know that I will go insane if this doesn’t stop. I can’t live like this. I cannot keep waking up earlier and earlier, always unable to fall back asleep. Always unable to concentrate on anything in the early morning except for that damn noise. It has to end.
I get out of bed in frustration. But I am determined to put an end to it this morning. I’ll find the source of the noise. I have to.
I put on a robe in the dark and stumble my way to bedroom door. Downstairs and make a cup of coffee. All the while, as I walk slowly and softly through the halls and down the stairs, I’m reaching out with my ears. I’m aware of all sounds. But that one sound most of all. I am trying to follow it. As I willingly give it my attention, it builds and builds. It is impossible to ignore now. Of course it is. But that’s fine. I want it to be as present as it can be. Because I’m going to find you. I’m going to find you and I’m going to kill you. I’ll unplug you. No—I’ll destroy you. Whatever you are, whatever contraption is making this sound, I will make sure that you can never be turned on again. Never.
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