Almost Nothing

For many years I wrote a diary. I do not really know why I wrote a diary, because not much happened in my life. To be a little more precise: Almost nothing happened in my life.

It started when I started being inside. It started with me being on sick leave from work - first 50%, then full sick leave. To keep track of the days, weeks, and months, I started writing in my diary. Eventually I got into a habit where I wrote a few words every day in the diary - in the log. There were mostly such things as: "Heavy rain today", or "overcast", or "fog clouds hanging down from the mountain tops".

I wrote a few words every day. Some days I wrote only one or two words, for example "Gray day". Or "Rain." Or I could write a little more, like "today the sun came back over Heklenuten".

For the last 19 years I have lived in this block. There are six apartments in the block, and a common entrance. Three apartments in one part, three in the other.

It is almost always quiet in the block. It is so quiet that when it rains I can hear the rain that hits the edge of the balcony above mine and that runs down and hits the floor of my balcony. When the rain has stopped, I can hear single drops falling down and hitting the edge of the railing on the balcony. Small sounds of droplets hitting the metal, gradually larger spaces between the droplet sounds, until they stop completely.

- Maybe the rain has stopped now, I think.

It is so quiet in the block that I can sometimes hear some private events that are easy to identify. On the floor above me stands the man who lives there on the toilet and pees. He always has a lot of pee. I hear how the jet hits hard down the bottom of the toilet, I imagine the splashing in the bowl when the strongest part of the jet comes. Then I can hear how he stops because he pinches, and then there is more, always a little more. Three or four times, until it's over. Empty.

When I go to the bathroom, I always make sure that my jet does not hit right down to the bottom of the toilet bowl, so that that sound does not occur. Since I know that I can hear when the neighbor above me pees in the toilet, I also know that he or the neighbor below me can hear me and my beam, if I do not take care.

I do not remember when I last spoke to anyone in the block. I'm not talking to anyone. It's a little weird, but I'm used to it. In fact, it was not difficult at all. I simply stopped talking. I think it took many weeks before I realized it. It dawned on me that I had not used my voice to talk to for many days, almost a whole month. It came almost by itself. It was not difficult. I just stopped talking.

A few days ago I decided to try my voice. I had the TV on, suitably loud, as I thought the voices of the people talking on the TV would be if they were real people who were in my living room. I tried to come in with my voice when the people on the screen had said what they were going to say. But I quickly noticed that I was talking in the mouths of the others in the TV studio, and it was almost a bit chaotic.

I gave up trying to talk. I decided that I would wait until later to try to awaken my voice to life again.

Now I concentrate most on making the days go by. The days must be as similar as possible, because then it is easier. I think I need to make time to go as seamlessly as possible. The days have to slide into each other, so that I do not stop and start thinking.

The thoughts come when I am not prepared is the worst. Sometimes, when it happens, it's as if I end up on an insane precipice, and I just hang there in the open air waiting for me to hit the ground.

I usually have the TV on, not too loud, nor almost without sound, almost like the sound I hear is from the person who lives above me. I have on TV mostly because I have to have some voices around me. When the evening begins to go towards night, I hear him upstairs going to the toilet. I turn up the volume on the TV to try to cover up the sound of his peeing splashing down the toilet. I do not like that sound. I have thought that I could complain to the board of the condominium, but something tells me that it would be useless. I have never heard of anyone ever coming forward with such a complaint.

When I go to bed, he's done with the toilet. Then I know it's over for this time, until he goes to the toilet again the next morning.