Admitting to the Voice

Written for Just Write

I can feel my blood in my left temple. Thud. Thud. Thud. I tried ignoring it while I cooked supper, I tried my breathing exercises to increase the flow of oxygen in my body. I wondered if my blood sugar got too low, and eat a slice of whole grain bread with peanut butter. No luck.

I only get a decent sized headache one or twice a month, but when I do, it’s a doozy. It always seems to be on the nights where I am flying solo for the evening. And when the headache gets to the point where I have to address, that’s when the little whispers in the back of my head begin.

My day was going well before the headache, and it pisses me off that my entire evening has been sidetracked by the throbbing in my brain. I’m lying on the couch with my eyes closed, praying for it to be done already, and it is only growing worse with the things I think I should be doing with my time.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Ant decides that he’s overtired and needs to whine. K decides that he needs to play his guitar to decompress. Loudly. Sophie is barking, barking, barking. She barks at the robin that has the audacity to land on the fence. She barks at the empty corner of the room. There’s a neighbor outside having a heated exchange on her cell phone. No matter that I’ve turned off the lights and the TV and even the dryer to reduce the noise while I wait for the prescription strength Advil to kick in. The entire universe is against me and my throbbing head at this point.

I can feel the world turning in my brain. It feels like a freight train and it sounds like a freight train, and damn if it doesn’t even smell like a freight train.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The nights where I have to do dinner and dishes and laundry and homework and planning and counseling and random acts of cleaning up after a dog with neuroses are the hardest—and not because this is so damn hard. No. It’s tiring, and time consuming, and sometimes overwhelming, but not hard. What makes this hard is the nagging voice in the back of my head that whispers mean, selfish, cruel things.

Why can’t anyone just leave me alone for five minutes so that I can collect myself?

Why is it that we have to whine about how unfair it is to do our chores?

Why couldn’t J throw in a load of laundry for a change?

Am I the only one who thinks about these things?

Why is it that we are always talking about him and his goals? When are we going to talk about me? What about my goals?

I think we all have this voice—I think we all have to battle with the small, buried piece of us that is selfish and gets tired of giving of ourselves at home and at work and with the kids and with our spouse. There is a part of us that we try to hide, which in turn whispers, “Seriously? We have to deal with all of this in one night? I have to listen to my husband vent today, of all days? This kid wants to have a meaningful life conversation right this minute?”

We think this voice is bad and that we should tuck it away—ignore it—and certainly not let anyone know about it. I’m calling bullshit on this now. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away—just like saying these things aloud to our family wouldn’t actually make us feel any better—just worse. Ignoring it, or trying to pretend it doesn’t exist seems to only give it more power, to justify it, to provide more fuel for its fire.

I won’t do that anymore. Yes, I have that whiny bitch of a voice in the back of my head. The selfish one. The one who wonders what all of these people would do for me if the tables were turned. And that’s okay. It’s okay to have that voice. It doesn’t make me feel any better about the difficult nights, but I refuse to let it make me feel any worse about them, either.

You’re out in the open now, you bantam, complaining whisperer, and if you don’t actually have the gumption to voice your complaints aloud, then I suggest you find something nicer to say.