Not too many people realize just how ugly the voice can become when it is returned to a pre-birth size. I should actually amend this thought. I should be saying 𝘯𝘰 𝘰𝘯𝘦 realizes. And 𝘯𝘰 𝘰𝘯𝘦 has experienced this. Period. The closest anyone has ever come to returning the voice to a pre-birth size is someone with a tracheotomy. Except when the voice is still there, there is room for it to re-grow. Nonetheless, one feels like a pretender 24/7 because they 𝘢𝘳𝘦 pretending.
I am pretending all hours of the day 𝘢𝘯𝘥 whenever I engage in conversation. I am pretending that my voice is like theirs. When I’m at home, I am pretending that it doesn’t bother me that my calling was taken from me. And this is something that I believe some can show empathy through. You find a pianist who finds himself a crippled hand or a fisherman who, at the end of the world, breaks the very last fishing rod. The story has strange twists of fate too.
Would you believe a story wherein a singer not only ‘loses’ his voice, but also because of his desire to accelerate its re-growth, he destroys his back as well?
Sad days.
Then, what is the timeline of destroying his back? Well, back when I was 19, I injured my back in such a way to cause muscle to come loose from the spine. Years later, with the aid of meditation and experimenting with pressure during meditation, I learned that it was possible to ‘deconstruct’ the back…. That is, by adapting what I’d learned from my other various experiments with the voice, I learned you can 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘰 the muscles of the back. And it’s as simple as that! (I even made a misleading video about it and posted it on YouTube! No, it’s not there any longer.) What I have learned is invaluable, but sadly, it’s all only useful if I ever write it down and talk about it.
I have experienced the deconstruction of the back five times (if you don’t count the times I tried learning to begin from the crown of the head). What a dreadful sensation that. (By the way, I did devise a great stretching routine to try to return my back as close to normal as I could, though it took 𝘴𝘰 much time! 𝘚𝘰 much time to make even the smallest dent! I approximate three months would recover 5% – and I stretched a͟ l͟o͟t͟!)
Currently my GP doesn’t think there’s anything immediately time-sensitive for my person. Meanwhile, I’ve told him when I hang my head upside down, it sways side-to-side on its own because of how the muscles there are so tense. What I haven’t told him is, my head and neck area feels as though they’re in a constant state of stretching. This doesn’t apply when I’m standing; however, in every other position I can take, it does, i.e., sitting back in a chair, sitting straight up in a chair, laying down, … in the bath, … in the bed all leads to a sensation of stretching on the outsides of my head, and this is especially true on the left, lower side of my lip (though I do now feel it up the left side of my cheek). And when laying down, it is supremely noticeable in the back and neck too!
[I] need to tense up my neck and slowly release that tension over the course of an hour- to hour-and-one-half, because if I don’t, the stretching becomes far too intense, and that leads to the muscles running up the sides of my head hurting and sore*.
Things’ll only get worse.
It’s really kind of funny that I’ve turned up with schizophrenia. It particularly ensures that I won’t be taken seriously for a long time. I have suffered somatic delusions before – and I assure you, feeling tremors going through your brain is not pleasurable. I do however know that my thoughts are untainted. My medication that I have does make me feel very stupid and my memory has gone out the window as a result, yet I strive for the truth and recognize where I stand in the world. I have fought long and hard to maintain an awareness of reality, and I intend to keep it that way.
The fact that I have to be ginger with my head whenever I move it in any direction, the fact that my back and neck area feel utterly disgusting and uncomfortable 24/7, and the fact that doing something can lead to something happening solidifies my beliefs. These things that I’m trying to teach and have brought to show-and-tell are facts. As fact as how you can come nearly to death by catching malaria.
And yes, I am leaving one very crucial element out of this body of text. It is strategic that I leave it out; however, I have written about it in my journals. I fear the burden of knowing is too great to talk about it openly.
*I’ve left some tidbits to be discovered on my Twitter. Read, if you desire.
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