I have a problem when it comes to silence in any form. In its most generic term, I can't stand for a room or a house to be silent because I suffer from auditory hallucinations (i.e. hearing voices) and that's usually when I can hear them most. As a child I slept with my TV on, volume just high enough that I heard noise, so that it muffled their words. It's like listening to a constantly changing radio dial, you hear snippets that make sense, sometimes your name, and the rest is noise. People wondering if I've heard that stereotypical "kill everyone" voice? Once. Last summer, and it scared the life out of me and landed me in the second outpatient mental health clinic I've ever been in.

I also cannot stand for a person to be silent, and by that I mean prolonged silence spanning what may be a half hour to days. I've dealt with it plenty when it comes to my mom. When I was younger and my disorders started rearing their ugly heads (just as I went into middle school) we tended to fight a lot because I wasn't doing most of my work anymore and then I started 'faking' sick to skip school about 3-4 days a week, every week. When we fought and I started getting hot under the collar, she'd go completely silent, leave the room, and pretend I wasn't in the house until she knew I had calmed down. She did it with my father because he always had to have the last word and he fed off resistance, so by her saying nothing and leaving she wasn't giving him fuel. With me, it makes me feel insignificant and always brings me back to those awful days where fights were a daily thing and I was being treated like a problem because no one knew there was anything clinically wrong, they just thought I was an angry teenager. Even now when we both know why I act out at some points, that I can't control myself, she gets this.. look on her face, turns around, walks away, and ignores me completely. It makes me even angrier now.

But to my point. When someone explodes in my face, I know what they're thinking and I can at least deal with that. Silence, I have no idea what's going on in their minds regarding me, whether they're angry or trying to hide from me or what. And with my acute paranoia, my doubts get fed until they're as fat as I am and growing, squawking like that stupid rooster one of our neighbors has.

By now with Hattie's job, I'm used to a few days of silence where maybe every other day or two days he'll get time to reply to my daily text or maybe once a week, twice if I'm super lucky, he can get online and be coherent for maybe 20 minutes. Last we spoke was last Thursday, aka a week ago today. While I've been doing alright on my new meds and they're keeping me from going crazy for no reason, the silence right now, which I KNOW he cannot help as it's the heart of summer with August and school fast approaching, is causing me some terrible thoughts. Last week I sent him a love letter, I think I mentioned that, and he hasn't mentioned receiving it just like he didn't mention that joke of a Father's Day card I made him, which I'm still not sure got sent. Part of me questions if he's mad about something I wrote in the letter. Another part questions if he's mad at me for something else or is doing what he warned me he might: pulling away. And of course add in the dream I woke up from at 4 am, sticking to the sheets in sweat, where I dreamt I texted him every day for a month with no word only to find out when his phone plan ended/was canceled that he had committed suicide because of work, and I'm pretty much at my wit's end. I always feel like the psycho girlfriend when I get this way. I never get paranoid that he's cheating, I just think he's mad at me for something I don't remember doing or he's hurt. I can't remember the last time I slept a whole night through or without waking frustrated. Every day is some fucking internal war with me regarding him.

Sorry about the billionth rant, you guys. I wish I had more positive things to say about myself.