Living With the Background Noise

I don’t remember a time when sleep came easily.

Insomnia wasn’t dramatic in the beginning. It came in spurts. Long stretches of lying awake, then weeks where it settled. By my early twenties, it felt almost functional. Theatre at night. Home late. Adrenaline still circulating. I told myself it made sense that my brain wouldn’t switch off.

But it wasn’t just stimulation.

It was analysis.

Every performance was replayed. Did I hit the mark? Did that line land? Did I look uncertain? Did I overdo it? I would run the entire day back like footage in an editing suite, adjusting tone and timing in my head as if that could alter what had already happened.

At the time, I thought it was professionalism.

I thought this is what serious people do. They evaluate.

What I didn’t see was that it never stopped.

To this day, I replay conversations.

Phone calls. Messages. Social interactions. Writing I’ve just sent. Something I said online. Something someone else said.

It all goes under review.

I dissect tone. Word choice. Facial expression. Timing. I try to calculate whether I came across as capable, kind, too much, not enough. I construct alternative versions in my head. Cleaner responses. Better phrasing. Stronger boundaries.

Eventually, my brain reaches a verdict:

That was rational. You handled that well enough.

But it’s rarely a faithful reconstruction of what actually happened. It’s reassurance engineering. An attempt to prove to myself that I showed up properly. That I tried hard enough. That I was a good human being in the exchange.

Even when I land on a conclusion, the relief is temporary.

There’s still a sense of something unresolved.

This started in my teens and early twenties and threaded through everything.

It didn’t look destructive from the outside. I was committed. If I said yes to something, I was all in. I believed in the courage of my convictions. I wanted to bring skill to the table. To solve problems. To lift the standard. To make things better.

But when outcomes didn’t match the expectation in my head, frustration surfaced quickly.

I could become sharp. Sarcastic. Demanding. Aiming higher than the room was prepared for.

At the time, I framed it as standards.

Looking back, it was anxiety.

Frustration was the surface layer. Underneath it was the fear of not being enough, not being taken seriously, not delivering at the level I believed I should.

The background noise isn’t loud.

It’s persistent.

A mental commentary running parallel to life. An internal audit that never quite closes the file.

Sleep is difficult because the review process doesn’t clock off. Even now, lying in the dark, my brain scrolls through the day as if something critical might be hiding in the details.

Most people see the performance. They don’t see the edit suite afterwards.

And for years, I thought this was just discipline.

It took me a long time to understand that it was something else.

The Anxiety No-One Sees

I was twenty-one and convinced that if I stopped pushing, the dream would evaporate.

Professional musical theatre. The West End. Not a vague idea — a fixed point. I wasn’t letting go of it.

One of the first open West End auditions was held in Glasgow. Five thousand people turned up. I travelled north for it, long journey, little sleep, cold air biting through a queue that seemed endless. A line wrapping around an old theatre that smelled of dust, velvet, and history.

I remember the architecture more than the fear at first. The opulence. The ceiling. The weight of it all. Those buildings make you feel small in the best and worst way at the same time.

I was lucky — I went with a friend. That helped. On the surface, we were just two young performers waiting our turn.

Inside, my adrenaline was doing hoola hoops.

I did well. I got a recall.

That’s when it changed.

Over the next several months there were more auditions. London. Actual West End stages. Standing where I’d imagined standing for years. The dream wasn’t theoretical anymore.

It was close.

That proximity did something to me.

Excited doesn’t cover it. I was lit up. But underneath that was something tighter. A quiet internal interrogation that never stopped.

Can I actually do this? This isn’t local theatre. This is the West End. Am I about to be exposed?

I knew I was talented. That wasn’t false modesty. I knew I could perform. But knowing you’re good and believing you belong in that arena are two different things.

Outwardly, I was steady. Focused. Professional. I didn’t let anyone see the internal negotiation. No one cracked the armour because I didn’t offer a crack.

I trusted no one but myself at that point. Not dramatically — just by default. I shared very little. It felt safer to be self-contained.

The closer it became to real, the more I scanned for threats.

Will something derail this? Will I make one mistake and watch it disappear? Do I deserve to be standing here?

People would have seen ambition.

They wouldn’t have seen the constant recalculating. The vigilance. The way I rehearsed confidence internally before walking into a room.

The anxiety no one saw wasn’t weakness.

It was the cost of wanting something that big and realising it might actually be within reach.

Carrying More Than I Admit

I was twenty-one when I came out.

I was already married. I had a baby boy.

The marriage lasted a year and a half. It should never have happened. The relationship was wrong from the beginning, and it unravelled quickly.

My son was never the mistake. I loved him. That part was simple.

What followed wasn’t simple.

Life moved fast. Theatre became my world. Rehearsals, contracts, travel. Years that felt unstable and transitional. I missed parts of his childhood.

We haven’t spoken for over ten years.

There’s no neat explanation attached to that. Just distance that became permanent.

That sits with me.

Margaret was different.

Forty years of friendship. Amateur dramatics. Musicals. Shared ambition before either of us had proof of anything. She pushed me toward professional theatre when it still felt unrealistic.

I nursed her until she died in 2024. Eighty-eight. I watched her decline in real time.

Since then, my anxiety hasn’t flared — it has settled deeper. A quiet, steady undercurrent.

She was the person who knew the earliest versions of me. There’s no one left who holds that continuity.

That absence is constant.

Financial pressure runs alongside everything. Planning, adjusting, recalculating. It’s not dramatic. It’s ongoing.

It rarely gets spoken about directly, but it shapes decisions.

I’ve been single since around 2010.

Not casually. Completely.

After enough failed attempts at something steady, I stopped trying. Partly exhaustion. Partly fear. Partly a quiet belief that I may not be someone people choose long term.

Sometimes I imagine what it would feel like to have one constant person. Not intensity. Not chaos. Just presence.

Then I pull back from the thought before it gathers momentum.

Carrying more than I admit isn’t one headline event.

It’s accumulation.

A marriage that ended quickly. A son I haven’t spoken to in ten years. A best friend gone. Money that requires constant management. Fifteen years of sleeping alone.

Individually, none of it looks catastrophic.

Together, it has weight.

Most days, I move as if it doesn’t.

When I look back, I can feel it.

Not a moment. Not an event. A hum.

Low. Constant. Under everything.

I was a quiet boy. Few friends. Some of them questionable. At the time, I thought I needed them — that they brought something to my life. Now, in the middle of my own, I can see they weren’t friends at all. I don’t even know what to call them. Proximity, maybe. Convenience.

I wasn’t afraid of people. That’s the strange part. I wasn’t timid in my thinking. I knew right from wrong. I had morals. Principles. I just lived quietly.

But there was something underneath.

I remember learning the word pacifist. I heard the definition and thought, “That’s me.” So I became one. I didn’t want conflict. I hated the bullies at school. Sometimes I was their play thing. When they pushed me to the ground, I developed a system — curl into a ball, stay still, let them think I was crying. They could never quite tell if it was real.

Maybe that was the actor emerging.

Home wasn’t easy either. My parents weren’t getting on. Divorce was hovering in the background. Nothing dramatic, just a steady tension. Another layer of noise.

I existed more than I lived.

I had my own world in my head. Sometimes I was happy there. Other times I wanted more — to be popular, to move more freely in groups, to not feel like I was observing life instead of participating in it.

Conversation was the barrier.

I’ve never understood small talk. Even then, it irritated me. Mundane exchanges that felt empty. I would think, That’s not real. Why are you saying that? And I’d shut down. Mentally cross someone off. Decide not to bother.

I started keeping myself to myself.

It wasn’t intentional. I didn’t label it anxiety. I didn’t label it anything. But I fell into a pattern and stayed there.

I did find one friend I could trust. A real listener. That mattered.

Later, when I spent time with older friends, they knew I was shy. They would answer for me sometimes. I’d add a small squeak just to prove I was present. I remember thinking, even then, You need to start talking more. Don’t let other people speak for you.

It took until about eighteen for me to come out of my shell properly. Even now, I can converse well. I can hold depth, spontaneity, creativity. I like jumping in a car and driving for hours just to see something new. Repetition bores me. Predictability suffocates me.

But introduce small talk, and something still tightens.

The hum returns.

Looking back, I don’t think anxiety arrived later in life. I think it was always there — shapeless, unnamed, woven into shyness, into observation, into silence.

I was shaping up to be a good adult. I knew I’d do something creative. I just didn’t know what, or where, or how. That came later.

The hum came too.

It never announced itself.

It was just always there.

There is a version of me that still shows up.

He answers messages. Records the episode. Washes the mug. Pays the bill. Keeps the conversation going.

From the outside, nothing is wrong. Everything is functioning.

But inside, it feels like running on a battery that never quite reaches full charge.

It’s not dramatic. It’s not collapse. It’s not crisis. It’s just… worn.

A low, steady depletion.

The strange thing about being worn down is that you can still be capable. You can still produce. You can still think clearly. You can still appear composed. In fact, you might even do good work.

But it costs more.

Small tasks require more negotiation. Noise feels sharper. Decisions feel heavier. Social interaction drains faster than it replenishes.

You begin rationing yourself quietly.

You calculate how much energy this call will take. How much the drive will cost. Whether you can afford the conversation.

And still — you function.

You show up to dinner. You press record. You reply politely. You keep the system running.

No one sees the internal maths.

Functioning while worn down isn’t weakness. It isn’t laziness. It isn’t fragility.

It’s endurance without spectacle.

It’s getting through the day without applause. It’s holding structure when you’d rather power down.

There’s a discipline in it. A quiet resilience.

But there’s also honesty needed.

Because functioning is not the same as thriving. And coping is not the same as being okay.

Some days, the most accurate description isn’t “I’m fine.” It’s “I’m still operating.”

And that counts.

Not as a triumph. Not as a failure.

Just as truth.

When Nothing Is Wrong, But I’m Not Right

I do this quiet check most evenings. Not deliberately — it just happens.

I look around my life to see if I’ve missed something obvious. If there’s a reason I’m feeling the way I am that I can point to and say there — that’s it.

There usually isn’t.

The day has gone fine enough. Nothing bad has happened. No arguments. No disasters. No emails I’m dreading opening. The house is as it was this morning. The animals are fed. The doors are locked. Everything is… in order.

And yet there’s this low, uncomfortable sense that something isn’t sitting right.

It’s not panic. Not properly. It’s more like my body is bracing for something it can’t name.

I feel it in my chest first. A slight tightness. Not enough to alarm me, just enough to keep my attention on it. Then comes the mental sweep — the part of my brain that starts searching for a cause.

Did I say something wrong to someone? Did I forget something important? Is there something coming up that I’m avoiding thinking about?

I replay conversations from earlier, listening for a tone I shouldn’t have used. I scan messages to see if I misread anything. I check my calendar, even though I already know what’s on it.

Nothing explains it.

That’s the part that gets to me.

If something were clearly wrong, I could deal with it. I could worry about that. I could focus on a problem instead of this vague, unsettled feeling that just hangs around without asking permission.

Instead, my brain starts filling in gaps.

Maybe this is just how it is now. Maybe this is the baseline. Maybe this is what happens when you’ve been holding things together for too long without noticing the cost.

I try to distract myself. Put something on. Scroll. Do a small job that doesn’t really need doing. I don’t want silence — silence gives the feeling too much space.

But even with noise around me, it stays. Quiet. Persistent. Like background static you only notice once someone points it out.

What makes it harder is the guilt that comes with it.

Because nothing is wrong.

I know people who are dealing with real, tangible problems. Big ones. The kind you can see and explain and justify feeling overwhelmed by. Compared to that, this feels flimsy. Unconvincing. Like I should be able to shake it off.

So I tell myself to be reasonable. To be grateful. To stop overthinking.

It works briefly. Then the feeling returns, unimpressed.

I don’t always want to talk about this, because it sounds ridiculous when I try to explain it out loud. “I’m not okay” followed immediately by “but I don’t know why” doesn’t feel like a solid thing to offer another person.

So I sit with it instead.

I let the evening pass. I wait for the edge to soften. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. There’s no pattern I’ve been able to trust.

Nothing is wrong.

But I’m not right.

And some nights, that’s all there is to say.