Unsettling Stories

White Noise

Static. White Noise. They say it's good for you. Your brain can tune out all the distracting noises of the world and instead just focus on the one important thing of the moment.

I always enjoyed static, the mindless noise that suffocates all others. Most people try to make the world of cars and people disappear behind a veil of music but for me white noise was always more efficient.

Turn it on and, after the few moments that your mind takes to adjust, everything unimportant fades into the distance. Without the constant disturbances your head feels light and clear and your thoughts can flow freely. Music never did that for me.

A few times friends asked me whether it was damaging my hearing to listen to white noise all day. Of course, they were exaggerating. I only had my ears filled with static whenever I was alone or wanted to be and feel alone. Static was my escape from the world.

Still, their doubts were justified. My doctor said it was okay as long as I gave my brain a break every few hours. Without a break the brain might adjust to the background noise; it might get addicted to the background noise.

I followed his advice and made sure that I unplugged my headphones at least every few hours. They felt so much like part of my body that I sometimes forgot to pull the cables out of my ears, but usually I did. I think I never silenced the world with white noise for more than four or five hours at a time.

At least not until my seizure.

I'm not actually sure whether it was a seizure. It could have been a miniature stroke or anything else that is strong enough to make an adult human unconscious. They never found what it was.

But that's not important. What is important is that I was alone at the time. I was on the bed of my rented one-room apartment with a book in my hand and white noise in my ears.

I saw my hands cramp. The book fell. Then everything went black.

If not for my brother I think I might have died. He wanted to visit. He rang the doorbell. He called my phone. Then, after half a day, he called the police.

They found me on the bed. My body was lying sideways, with my head pushed against the wall. I had a crust of saliva around my mouth and a crust of blood around my ears.

My brother said that, in the hospital, I woke up screaming.

When the blackness faded away it was replaced first by pain and then by noise. Pain and noise. That has been my life for the last six months.

Even for my friends it took a while until they understood that I'm not just rude. They still stare at the headphones when I meet them, but they have adjusted. They know that I can hear them through the noise – and they know that I can't hear them anymore without my headphones.

With strangers it is more difficult. Shopkeepers and waitresses always look as if they want to stab me for my rudeness. Making new friends has become hard; most think that I am trying to make some odd fashion statement. I gave up on dating.

But the social implications are not what bothers me. I never was the person that is upset about an evening alone at home.

What bothers me are the noises I hear in the rare moments without white noise to drown them out.

My doctor says that those three days without a break made my brain "get used" to the white noise. He says it is like an addiction.

My brain is accustomed to hearing a constant level of buzzing background – and it reacts strongly when the background noise is taken away.