I made a bizarro realization the other night concerning my voice, which surprised even me in its intensity. I was doing this breath work practice where you do a kind of circular breathing which involves a continuous movement of air, pulled in through the mouth dropped, and then inhaling again so you are just constantly flooding your body with energy, breath, air and the oxygen you breathe, the life force of us as beings, if you will. I did this for an hour and there was a time period which elapsed and I felt that familiar sensation, a groping of my breath through the spaces in my body, leaving my mouth literally trembling and pulsing with that. It’s almost the same zap that comes along after a deep orgasm, that literal tingling paralytic trembling that invades every spot on your flesh. It is the heavy sensation, the afterglow, minus the trembling spasms that usually precede my face falling numb while my body feels that it is floating.

I thought of yelling during the practice, for a minute, and recognized I haven’t yelled, quite literally, since 2006, before I had the surgery which took my voice from 2006-2008. I laid there contemplating it for almost the entirety of my practice while I let the numbness and life roll over me like an undulating wave. Then I realized the loss of my voice and what I tried to do right afterwards, going to school and trying to go to a school which required active participation, voiceless and full of dented confidence, was the dumbest thing I have ever done. My professors could barely hear me, and my classmates could never hear me either. I spent all of my time alone, petrified that people would not be able to hear me if I ever struck a conversation up with me.

I was living in Brooklyn, NY and did not have a voice. Almost every person who ever heard me offered me cough drops, asked me about my laryngitis. After a while I refused to go anywhere where I would have to talk to anybody in any kind of noise-challenged environment, which was everywhere at the time, most times. In that time I went out maybe three times, and almost every time ended horribly. I was ashamed and unhappy and self conscious and learned to shut it all down.

The voice I have now, though much more intact than it was then, is not exactly the once I was born with–it’s actually a little higher, but still softer. It’s phone sex still, but with less integrity. I have had a procedure which involved injecting my vocal folds with a skin paste made of dead people (cadavers) with the DNA removed from the cells. My doctor loved telling me they call it zombie dust in the trade, and it worked in some ways-well it certainly enhanced the whispery breathy thing that was my voice before. I still strain in loud venues, and I am sure I still continue to get the polite nods, and smiles even though I know they have no idea what I am saying at all. Which is cool. If I really want you to hear, I will make that effort, but I cannot tell you how many times I’ve laughed to myself while hearing other people discuss me as if I couldn’t hear. Like my lack of voice meant I was somehow deaf–and even now I laugh at that misconception–it seems to be almost unconscious with everyone I have met. The circles I prefer are more intimate and less diluted by outside noise. And yeah, I am still one of those people, tattooed to the nines, which assumes nobody will remember be I haven’t spoken intimately conversed with because I assume a woman who is 6 feet tall with Dutch features and Japanese artistry is completely forgettable. Stupid, I know.

I’m going to try an experiment-my inklings of contact will no longer be ignored for fear of silence. There is nothing worse than that, and its memory brings me back to maybe 8-17, when my voice was categorically ignored all of the time. I wasn’t listened to, and I was assured my voice wasn’t worth hearing since my opinions didn’t matter.

I know this is all bullshit now, given where I have been and what I have experienced. There is nothing better than a you should be dead experience or several to wrangle your heart awake and see what really matters. And since I am here, and you are reading me, I have all of the audience I need.