Idle Thoughts After Waking to My Screaming Ear & Not Being Able to Fall Back Asleep

That noise. That fucking noise. An unrelenting assault on my psyche. A perpetual reminder that I will never experience silence again. Why me? Why did I end up like this? Was it chance or fate that lead me to find that damn phone charger which emitted the electrical discharge sound I can never unhear? Would I have ended up like this if I had just been able to transfer colleges like I wanted to? What if I had gotten proper treatment when it (and my hearing) got worse the first time? Or the second? The whistle from Hell. I’ve lived my worst nightmare not once, but twice now. I’m ready to give up. I’m ready to end it all. I mean it this time. I can’t take it anymore. I had habituated, adjusted, was living a normal life. Not once, but twice. For a brief, beautiful 6 months, I had finally experienced that impossible dream that other people call “being happy.” And now? I’m a shell of a man. An empty husk of the person I once was. To the end of my days, I’ll keep asking myself “what if?”

But none of it will help. None of it matters. What’s done is done. Perhaps soon I too will be done. Done with life. Done with living and love and happiness. Everything I’ve ever held dear. I am staring into the abyss, wanting to let go and fall in. Should I? Let go of everything I’ve ever wanted and cared about? Take the plunge into the void and emptiness? I want to. I want to so bad. I want to be released from this pain. Let the sweet release of death take me away into eternal silence.

Then again, knowing my luck, death would just be an empty void with only that sound. The eternal ringing. The “voice of God,” as some call it. An eternal reminder of my arrogance and foolishness. Even in the afterlife something I can never unhear, a cruel and unbearable reminder of my folly as if to say, “why did you do it? Why did you selfishly take your own life? Did you really think killing yourself would make everything better? What about everyone who loves and cares about you, utterly devastated and left to ask their own ‘what if’? ‘What if I had really known the pain he was in, understood how serious all the cries for help were, the true extent of his suffering? Even if I did, could anything I have done actually helped?’ Somehow that seems even worse than the “what if’s” I’ll wrestle with for the rest of existence.

Self-abuse of my mind and body for years is what lead to this point. I knew what not to do, but because I hated myself I didn’t care. I didn’t take my own suffering seriously. Until perhaps it became too late. On the other hand, I guess since I’m still here, maybe it’s not too late. It certainly feels like I’m approaching the end of my story. But again, that’s probably just wishful thinking. I would never get off that easy, with protracted suffering.

So where do I go from here? I don’t know. I have absolutely no idea. Part of me is afraid to be hopeful things ever get better, because in my heart I’m certain they can only get worse. Although I’m loathe to imagine what worse than THIS looks like. Bend but don’t break, as they say. How far can one human being be bent before they finally snap? Maybe that’s why I’m here. Some kind of cosmic case study. An experiment in human suffering, playing out on an insignificant stage. Testing the true limits of psychological torture both self-inflicted and otherwise. I guess I’ll need some additional data before I can definitively reach that conclusion. The study continues.

 

It's weird when all the things that you feel and obsess about are being said by somebody else.

I'm here again after 8 years of silence.

It's extremely hard but all we can do is take it step by step.

And no, I don't think it's too late.

 

Love your optimism despite you suffering. That takes a lot of courage.

 

That’s the way I’ve started living my life, one day at a time. Some are better than others. I keep trying to tell myself “I was happy and habituated before, I’ll be happy and habituated again” but obviously overpowering those thoughts are easier said than done. Especially when your tinnitus seems to be exhibiting new behavior like mildly spreading to my former “good” ear and constantly fluctuating in volume and intensity throughout the day.

All I can do these days is tell myself that “one day at a time, one step at a time” will lead to somewhere else, for better or worse. The real problem is the impatience. So I guess the best we can do is try our hardest each and every day. And wait and see where the path leads.

 

Hi, sorry to hear you're feeling like this. I don't know what your tinnitus was like before you habituated, but it's quite possible other people have experienced the level of noise you're experiencing now and seen improvements or habitation from there. Things often seem worse in the night but then another day comes and we find there are still things we can enjoy in life.

Hang in there, you've found a rich supply of help and support with this forum.