The Little Voice
The little voice in the back of my head is rabbiting away. I suppose it always has been. Snippets of sounds being made somewhere far away. Indistinct murmurings. Or as Paul Weller once wrote, “far away voices boarding far away trains”. Only I’m left wondering whether that far away train is getting closer. And whether it is an old one, the ones where you could pull the windows right down and lean out of. And somewhere on that train is another me screaming out of one of the windows only for the voices to be taken and swept away by the wind whistling past the train. I also wonder whether it is the crazy train, and that has always been there, waiting to carry me away with it.
If it has been it has been well hidden for a long time. I wonder if the alcohol helped with that, kept its track from being able to find me. Three years have gone since that potential blocker left the station. Has the little voice been getting louder, getting nearer, getting clearer. Or has the lack of haze meant my ability to hear it has gotten stronger, my hearing sharper, more able to adapt and pick up the far away tones.
Because I don’t like the tone. The words may still be indistinct, but the tone is crystal clear. Chiming like a bell. Like the clanging chimes of doom (eurgh, sorry, Band Aid slipped in there, there is just no telling where the strange open tabs in my mind will jump to next). It is the doom I am afraid of. Almost as if I know that everything is going to fall to pieces. That there is disaster around every corner. That the comfortable zone I am in is going to melt away. Disappear. Leaving grey, bleak, cold, terror. The composed life, being good at my job, being happy at home, having the routine of football, and of writing, having those things I enjoy, being able to travel and see new places, have those experiences. That all of that will vanish as if it was a dream, leaving just a desolation in its place.
That is what the tone suggests. The ominous music, the last post, the imperial march, psycho shower scene music, the jaws beat, the slow heavy drum beating, all the portents.
Those wispy dark smoky tentacles creeping out of the shadows working their way over, under, around, or through anything and everything to get to where I am, wanting to wrap themselves around my limbs, wanting to enter into my mouth, nose, eyes, and ears, and claim me as its own.
It’s like that dripping tap, or the ticking clock that is just too loud. Needling away at me, preventing sleep with the drip, drip, drip, the tick, tick, tick. Only it’s inside my head. Somewhere in one of those deep recesses in the mind. I can’t get up and tighten that tap to stop the drip. Put the ticking clock in a cupboard somewhere to dampen the noise.
It makes sleep harder to come by and that was always something difficult to get to. The existing smorgasbord of random thought patterns, playing havoc with getting to sleep at the best of times. Just when I think I have shut all the browser tabs down. Up pops another one. And they are never playing lullabies to aid sleep. It is always the bull in the china shop.
But this is different now. It feels more dangerous. It isn’t just waiting for me to try and get to sleep to come out and play. It is always there. On the edge of consciousness, toying with me, distracting me, clouding my judgement, casting doubt on my decision making. As if it is trying to drive me into making mistakes, making me second guess myself.
And yet I can’t put my finger on what it is back there in the dark depths of my psyche that is causing this. I don’t know how to stop it. How to cut it off. How to silence it. Or how to ignore it. Shrug it off as I have done for decades. How to destroy it before it destroys me.
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After years of prevaricating, I have finally gotten around to self-publishing some books. I now have three books available. The first is the novel “Where The Lights Shine Brightest”, this is available on Amazon at
Next up is a collection of drabbles, three hundred and sixty six of the little hundred word stories, under the title of “A Drabble A Day Keeps The Psychoanalyst Away”, this is available on Amazon at
Finally, there is an autobiographical work, released under my alter ego of Kevin Rodriguez-Sanchez, which covers a two year period in the early noughties when I lived in Manchester — “Five Go Mad In Manchester”. Again, this is available on Amazon at
They are all available as paperback or eBook. And if you have Kindle Unlimited then they are available on there to read whenever. Please buy / read / leave reviews.
