The Noise in my Head

I thought everyone had noisy heads.

Mine is nonstop. Everything, all together, all at once, in layers, in varying volumes, complete with visuals, colors, lights, a synesthesia feast of senses crossing lines. There's music and conversations and a lot of shouting and laughter and weeping. There are endless reels of memories, old dreams, old nightmares, wishful thinking, worst-case scenarios, best-case scenarios, books playing out -- with every book I've ever read contributing a piece to a tapestry of nonsense narrative. Songs vie for the loop highway, often merging into a pile-up crash and a tangle of earworms.

And on top of all that I have to think for myself, my daily life, my work, my plans. There are always strange sounds in the background, crashes and shrieks and inappropriate bursts of curses and violent protests that could suddenly switch into perfect lines of poetry (which I would scramble to capture on paper except the words would fade as soon as they manifested).

Making plans is an obstacle course. And there seems to be a conspiracy to make plans fail. Sustaining routines and habits are almost impossible. Chaos is what connects.

Amidst all these there are certain wirings or flows in my brain that make it difficult to just do things. There has to be mood and a moodboard in my mind. There has to be a secret formula, a secret chemistry, and they are never the same. Sphinxes guard every tiny decision of movement, every intent of action, and the puzzles have to be solved, or else. Conditions have to be met. Offerings have to be given.

I have to have many things going on at a time. Or else my brain gets bored and it makes my body feel awkward and makes my legs shake or sway or drum on the floor and the space between my fingers feel tight and my toes curl in my shoes.

At work even while I would complain about the workload, there is a part of me that delights at the nonstop pops of new projects -- ooh something new for my brain to chew on and figure out. But then after the first flush of novelty I get fidgety about the tedium of the middle parts, a slight pick up of energy when it's about to end, and off to latch on to a new one. Once I've figured things out I start to lose interest, in a way. But I do love and enjoy the crafting part of things. I love and enjoy the data-hunting and puzzle-solving. I grit my teeth through the remaining parts of cleaning up.

The noise in my head demands feeding. So I read a lot. There are phases when I read voraciously. Phases when I would watch TV series one after the other to carve new spaces in my mind with new stories or fresh angles of old ones. Phases when I would make art to pour out some of the sounds and sights and textures storming inside me.

The floodgates are always open and there are regular tsunamis and earthquakes and thunder rumbling in various distances and various skies and lightnings striking thrice or more. If you ask me what I am thinking now I would not know exactly what to say because it's everything from the dirty coffee cups accumulating on my desks to wondering when I could run the errand to buy new light bulbs for the hallway to trying to remember what book had that quote I just remembered that had to do something about octopus. And it's all rushing fast, circling around again, in spirals and zigzags and labyrinths without end.

I have vivid dreams when I sleep and I can force myself to continue certain dream storylines if I wish. At the same time I get really horrible nightmares that leave me paralyzed and screaming silently until I wake up for real.

I frequently suffer from insomnia and have to medicate to knock out all the thoughts in my head. But believe me, it takes a while before they would let go.

It fascinated me no end to find out that not everyone experiences this. The most I can imagine is that it's almost like a constant almost meditative state of quiet and that "peace of mind" can be a literal state. Maybe just a monotonous static, like white noise, that lets you go about with minimum distraction. I don't know. Right now my head is literally aching from the crowding of thoughts that is why I am writing to spill some out.

I wanted to be a writer because I thought maybe the perpetual noise in my head can be turned into something profitable enough to help feed the rescue cats. But I didn't consider the fact that putting a cohesive anything would be like herding said cats. I cannot sustain focused writing to save my own life for the long term. Everything I try to establish for the long term is bulldozed by executive dysfunction, which is another aspect of my brain I have to live with.

So what now? I just finished the last meeting of the day. Yes I have been writing this in-between meetings and work tasks because I need to. Now I need to let myself take a break. Soften the sharp edges of the noise by playing Last War and getting into my best adaptation of a meditative state to help me calm and settle down for the rest of the evening.