​I Left the Television On Just to Hear a Human Voice

Dear Delyara, The silence in this guard post is so heavy it feels physical, like a thick dust settling over my brain. To stop the walls from closing in, I turned on an old, broken portable television in the corner of the staff room. I didn't even look at the screen; it was just a mindless shopping channel playing on a loop. I just needed to hear the pitch and rhythm of human voices speaking in the background while I wrote out our database code. It’s an incredibly pathetic realization to know that you are using a late-night infomercial to trick your brain into feeling less alone. When the station went to static, the sudden drop back into total silence felt like a bucket of ice water poured over my chest.