Voices

I don't know when the war in my head started - just that it never really stops. My therapist says it's all trauma and misfired neurons, some chemical cocktail left over from a childhood I can't remember clearly. Maybe she's right. Maybe not. But the truth is, these voices? Sometimes, they make more sense than silence. And whether I agree with them or not, I rarely go against them.

I used to think I was special for having these constant voices in my head. In every scenario - even now, as I write this very sentence - I hear a cacophony of personalities speaking to me. Each with their own bias. Each offering a different outcome, a different choice, a different truth. Most people might find it impossible to make sense of them all, but I don't. Even when they're all shouting at once, I can hear each one clearly, like threads in a tangled chord. So fast. So demanding. So intense. And yet, on the outside, only a blink passes - and I'm back in the room, answering like nothing happened. I pick the voice that fits best - based on experience, instinct, and what I want in that moment - and chart my course through the maze.

These voices don't take turns, and they don't wait their turn. They don't rise one by one like speakers in a room they hit all at once, an instant reaction to every situation. A sideways glance, a sudden noise, a strange text at 2 a.m.-the voices are already there, dissecting it, judging it, predicting outcomes before I consciously register what's happening. It doesn't matter if I'm standing in a grocery store line or watching someone I love fall apart - the voices are working. They're reflexive. They're efficient. They've become the framework I rely on to survive, to interpret the world, to decide who I need to be in each moment. And maybe that's the strangest part: I don't know if I've ever made a decision entirely on my own. I don't know if anyone does.

In my youth, I moved around quite a bit. I attended five different elementary schools and seven different middle schools across three states. That constant sense of movement instilled in me a strange cocktail of detachment, loneliness, and arrogance. I remember telling peers and teachers new stories each time I arrived somewhere new. Sometimes, my father was a lawyer. Other times, he was in the military. Once, I even said he was a forensic scientist. But in reality, he was a poor drunk who worked at a gas station.

We eventually settled in a small apartment in New Mexico by the time I reached high school. That’s when I really started to notice the voices — started wondering if they’d calm with age. I found myself questioning whether the people I interacted with every day — friends, strangers, teachers — carried this same noise in their heads. Or if I was the only one trying to navigate a conversation while a whole cast of voices bickered over every word.

There were moments, or rather substances, that helped to slow these voices down. Like pressing the mute button during an ad break. Throughout my teenage years and up to college, I often found solace when my bowl turned from lush and sticky green to a black and grey ash. That, coupled with a few psychedelics, was often enough to feel normal. During those stretches of quiet, I felt still, weightless, like I was finally inhabiting a version of myself untouched by the usual crowd inside my head.

But the silence never stayed. The voices always came back - not louder, not changed - just present. As if they'd only stepped out for a smoke break of their own. I never expected the quiet to last. I knew, sooner or later, they'd return to fill the spaces they'd left behind.