The Sound of Silence

At 4 AM, Violet is insatiable.

She is a raging insomniac, a girl with a sharp nose and a tendency to chew her nails. Violet stays up all night ingesting words, poetry, internet binary. She goes to Wikipedia’s page and hits random. Violet reads of Icarus, of Velvet Underground, of Davy Rothbart and Red-breasted Pygmy Parrots. She cries sometimes at night. She doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s the beauty of the world, the thrill of her pulsing computer screen and yellowing book pages. Maybe it’s the snaking knowledge, the messages slithering into her system and resonating in a series of brain synapses (which she has read all about.) Violet tells herself she’s hormonal, but even this is a lie. She eats free-trade chocolate and listens to “Neutral Milk Hotel”, sometimes taking breaks to groom her budding novel. She has resolved to only write at 4 AM, designating that sacred hour each morning. Her novel is strange. It’s hallucinogenic, phantasmagoric and labyrinthine (her three favorite words which she often uses out of context.)

Violet is afraid of light. Google has told her she’s “photophobic.” Violet has many other incapacitating social phobias, but chooses not to dwell on them. She does, however, mull over her aversion to the bright quite a bit. She considers childhood drama that could have caused this event (as she is taking an online psychology course) but cannot think of anything. Her parents were flawless. Her mother baked pies bloated with cherries, her father milled about cubicles. She went to charity balls with mother, to office bashes with father. People said she was charismatic. Violet considers the fact that her small talk could have been used up—her fabricated laughter evaporated into storm clouds. She confides with her laptop. Violet’s a hypochondriac, a bibliophile, a nyctomaniac. These definitions are comforting. It’s so lovely that she can catalogue herself like that, putting her mind into tidy little file folders.

***

Violet used to know a boy named Isaac. She once tried to put him in file folders, and maybe that’s why he left. He got so mad. Maybe he just couldn’t stand a mess of a girl, one who relished psychological disorders like candy. Violet met Isaac at an insomniac support group, one of those little things her therapist made her go to. He was so eccentric. His eyes were always shifting, always incredulous at the world he saw. He seemed so pleased with mundane events. In one of the sessions Isaac spoke of his insomnia.

“My mind will just spin off,” he breathed, “the noises of the world turning around me, the music from my radio. Night just seems so addictive. The sounds are perfect, you know?”

Violet didn’t know. She could only think of how hearing was only vibrations are detected by the ear, nerve impulses perceived by the brain’s temporal lobe. She tried to relate. Violet listened to tapes that claimed to help improve social dexterity. They came in faded covers at her library, people with 80’s hair grinning on the CD cases. She would go to her parent’s basement and slip them into her CD player, sliding on headphones. She loved the crackle of sound when she hit play.
Hello. My name is Patricia/Patrick. How are you doing today?

“Badly,” Violet confessed, “I haven’t slept in two days and I can’t get
Schrödinger’s paradox out of my head. That poor cat…”

You may answer ‘Good, thank you, how about you?’

“Good, thank you, how about you?” Violet parroted.

I am fine, thanks for asking.

Violet knew her victory was deplorable, but she couldn’t stop the swell of pride sweeping over her. She imagined herself as Icarus—a shining hero soaring to the blazing sun, buoyed by her social capabilities. Even though the conversations were predetermined she felt so special, so important, just because the silky-voiced woman spoke directly to her. She applied her knowledge when talking with Isaac. He seemed to humor her.

From then on, their relationship spiraled on naturally. They only saw each other at the meetings, but there was a sort of kinship in that. They both had similar views about insomnia. Violet had never been able to sleep because her brain was always calculating, always trying to conduct scientific studies and decipher indie rock lyrics. Isaac related to that sense of restlessness. There was a large difference between their conditions, though Isaac did not know this. He, of course, wanted to cure his insomnia. Violet did not.

She embraced her disorders with vigor, counting them on her fingers like a child. She loved anything relating to science. It was nice to chart up her weight, her flesh, her brain, her soul. Violet collected knowledge about from an unbiased view. It made it easier somehow, not thinking from one’s own perspective. She made a list of everything she knew about herself.

1. Violet has insomnia. She does not want to be normal.
2. Violet is a bibliomaniac and internet addict.
3. Violet has O negative blood.
4. Violet has many social anxieties.
5. Violet aspires to be a psychologist.
6. Violet likes things that are black and white.
7. Violet is an atheist.
8. Violet has no family.
9. Violet is in love with her boyfriend.
10. Violet’s boyfriend doesn’t love her.

That was only seventy-one words. It was actually sixty-one words, really, if she removed the word “Violet” from each line. The declarations were neat. It pleased her that she could squeeze her life into a list like play dough into a mold. No confusion, no wonder. Just cold facts.

***

Violet remembers the night Isaac broke up with her. They were at a 24 hour truck stop, a romantic scene for two sleepless lovers. Isaac had bought her a Slurpee and was busy writing his poems on a napkin, watching her with each stanza. Violet was his inspiration. She liked knowing this. His green eyes shone electric at this time of night, new energy pulsing through arteries, as he wrote his labyrinthine notions at an alarming rate. They were hallucinogenic and phantasmagoric.
Violet recalls how Isaac kissed her. He was always so careful, mossy looks cautious as his mouth edged closer. Car horns blared. Sneakers squeaked. Isaac just whispered his poetry under those florescent lights, drowning out the 2 AM noises. His words seemed to seep into her ears like noxious chlorine, a murky sort of high that made Violet’s legs rubbery.

When Isaac was there, she didn’t think analytically. Things got messy. Violet’s mind whirled into uncharted galaxies as his hands marked her cheeks in elegant calligraphy, fingerprints webbing across skin. It scared her. It excited her. It made her so irrevocably confused and senseless that she did silly things, things like kissing him back. It was petrifying when he stopped speaking. When his hands relaxed around her waist and he just watched her, his eyes warm with emotions that unsettled Violet. The unspoken words seemed to weave between the couple, a sticky threading that bound them tightly. Violet was overcome with the impulse to run. Why did relationships evoke her fight-or-flight response? What was wrong with her?

The cashier had cleared his throat. He was did it in that impatient way, a way which meant they needed to get out. Isaac ignored him, but Violet broke away and briskly walked up to the door. Isaac seemed hurt. She flit outside and let the icy air bite at her cheeks. It felt good, slicing across her, putting sense into that muddled brain. The wind whipped away Isaac’s fingerprints. It was atonement.

Isaac fallowed her, speaking in a bitter voice. He said he felt rejected. Violet told him that was ridiculous. He began getting upset, yelling about how she always ran away. Violet wouldn’t listen. She couldn’t listen. She shut him out in the tidiest of ways, refusing to let her ears detect the vibrations, refusing to let her temporal lobe sort them out into anything distinguishable. It wasn’t her fault. It truly wasn’t. She just had insomnia, haphephobia, nyctomania, photophobia , automania, eremophobia, and crippling philophobia. Nothing was ever her fault.

Isaac left, breaking the transparent string that bound them. The words unspoken seemed to lace into Violet’s bloodstream, clotting arteries and making each cardiac pulsation a painful experience. She wanted to chase him. She wanted to snake her arms around Isaac’s torso and hold him tightly, feeling his human warmth. Curiously, she didn’t move.

I love you.

The words stuck in her throat, trying desperately to crawl out. Violet wanted to say it, really, she did. The only issue was that she had logophobia. Very unfortunate indeed. In the darkness, amidst a frigid parking lot, Violet felt her wings of wax melt away to nothing.