The First Thing You Forget Is How Your Own Voice Sounds. After Three Years, Two Months, And Four Days Of Absolute Silence, The Air In My Throat Felt Like Jagged Glass. My Vocal Cords Were A Rusted Machine, Forgotten In The Rain. People Think Silence Is A Choice, But For Me, It Was A Tomb. I Had Crawled Inside It The Night My Parents’ Car Became A Heap Of Screaming Metal On Us-89, And I Hadn’t Found The Door Out Since.