Fools said I,you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

-- Simon & Garfunkle, Sound of Silence

I have suffered from tinnitus my whole life without knowing what it was or what it was called.

I remember as a child thinking there where ghosts in my room because I could here this endless singing accompanied by a rhythmic knocking, as of someone trying to get in.

When I got older, I saw several different doctors in an attempt to be treated for chronic headache and fatique. I couldn't sleep. I had constant headaches. I started suffering from small episodes of vertigo - the entire world would flip over for a few seconds. The first time it happened to me, I fell out of my desk at school. The doctors never found anything. At least two different doctors told my parents that I was "imagining" it, or it was "a plea for attention." Eventually, after I wrecked my car caused by a vertigo-related episode, I was given medication for headaches. This medication had a tendancy to make me sleepy and mostly stopped the vertigo problems.

My freshman year of college, we didn't have air conditioning in the dorm rooms. I discovered by accident that a fan running in the background - white noise - damnped down the sound in my head enough that I could ignore it. That has been my solution since then. The fan runs. Constantly.

I have never known, in my entire life, more than two or three minutes of absolute silence. Always, always there is this constant, continous noise. Sometimes it's light, like the song of a bell as the ringing actually stops and there's a brief shimmer in the air for a few moments.

Recently it's been like someone shaking a sheet of very thin metal - sometimes they use this as a sound effect for thunder during stage-plays.

I haven't been sleeping. The sounds in my head are loud enough that I can't hear the fan. Sometimes I can't hear people talking.

I really, really hate this.