Silence

It hurts that I can't sit in silence. My bedroom, car rides, hell, even just trying to fall asleep, I need something to remind me that I'm not being hunted. The problem with addiction, with anxiety and its depressive love affair, is the hints in everything. Every thought, every passing second is a precise, meticulously-calibrated execution of the illness scouting its sufferer. It knows footprints in the snow, the difference between a breeze and a breath. For the hunted, it's never persistent on the heels, nipping, sometimes pulling away with blood drawn. It likes to watch its meal tremble, causes the tongue to salivate. Causes muscles to tense and burn, causes collapse. I can't sit in silence anymore.