Thie title might seem to set a dramatic tone for this article but there's actual amazement inside as well. And I'm very serious if I say that I'm glad I survived 2013.

To talk about what happened in the beginning of that year I need to preface this with a small story. I actually was well on my way doing some much needed weight loss efforts in 2012 and I thought I was doing a good job and at the end of that year I lost about 20 kg (40lbs). It was at that time that my tinnitus suddenly underwent a huge change. For years I thought I had coped with the constant noise in my head but then everything changed again. It seemed like I was back at the very beginning, losing weeks of decent sleep because I needed to "relearn" to cope with it.

I was in a very dark place because it changed. It started pounding in my head. Imagine hearing a Payday 2 cloacker nearby 24/7. Imagine that you hear a high pitch spike in your head whenever your heart beats and you know what I mean. It used to be a constant tone but all kinds of weird deformed stuff started to sip in. There would be some nights that this tinnitus sounds like someone roofing, other nights it sounds like a mosquito is singing along with every noise I hear outside. It got very weird and I started hearing all these things that were added. No longer was it a simple tone.

I just had released my third E.P. on Itunes and I had fun doing that. But I was at the same time so depressed that whenver I would do the thing I love the most in life, - namely making music - I'm punished by a severe increase again. Was it because of my severe weight loss, or spending time intensively monitoring my tracks for weeks on end ? Maybe both ? I didn't know. I just felt punished and "treated unfairly".

At that point I thought "this is it for me". I'll never sleep again, I am going to DIE! (because that's what depravation of sleep will do to you eventually. Imagine you wanting to sleep but you can't because you constantly hear all that shit in your head. You want to turn it off but you cant. And I think I told this before but if sound hits your soul so closely as it hits mine it's extra tough. Some people can live with sounds happening near them and they wouldn't even be concious about it.

For me the challenge was (and still is, because one can't change the nature of the beast) to try to select what's important and what's not. It actually helped to read the Jastreboff theory which says that we all are by nature alerted by some sounds and that ties into our survival instincts. We need to be alert for certain sounds that are uncomon. It made sense, why would you sleep if you constantly hear a sound that annoys you. Those things can't be compatible. But the scary thing is that, if you start realizing this in a cognitive way and you study the literature that exists in this area, you experience this in a cognitive way. But still the brain doesn't always follow immediately after. You keep on being on edge and feeling intense at night to the point that I even felt scared to go to sleep. But I kept doing it. I'm not suicidal, I love life and that was the drive to just do this over and over every night for the whole month of january 2013.

Every time it becomes worse (which is like once or twice a year) It's as if my brain has to "learn" to cope with it after I started to accept the new condition. It's like learning to walk, you want it but you don't fully master it in one hour. It will take weeks to master if not months.

So at the end of January something happened. I suddenly got kidney stones and had to be carried to the hospital. Believe it or not but that was actually a GOOD thing. It somehow represented a change in routine and I knew that I had to go trough it. I actually SLEPT sometimes for hours on end in that hospital. It ofcourse helped that a nice night nurse came plug me with some liquid paracetamol now and then to help the kidney pain go away.

It's stupid really. I'm complaining out of my wits about something that only happens in my head, and then "shit gets real" and I have to go and sleep in an entirely different environment, and THEN I started feeling less scared of of going to sleep. After that hospital visit of a few days, I started actually sleeping better at home. I felt the relativity of my new tinnitus condition slipping trough.

I am happy for this, but still humbled. There's still this lingering part of me that is afraid of going back in full force to make music. I have some tracks ready. Some people want me to make stuff but now I'm in a happy place and I don't want to give it up. It might have turned me into a slacker but I can hardly forget all those nights that I was lying awake senseless, halucinating, having broken dreams about stuff not working out.

I'm glad that I can do stuff like working on some left 4 dead stuff, playing with friends, giving (hopefully useful) feedback on forums on games that I really love. Sometimes I wonder how people like Sting or Leonard Nimoy cope with their incredibly loud tinnitus. I thought William Shatner has it also, he had it from a loud explosion on the set. I can Imagine that his is even louder than me.

I bet need to find "the code" to forever let it go but I can't rightnow. The thought that if I make too much music iit'll get worse again is always and forever looming over my existence. You also don't really have control over that when it happens and there's no "cure". It kind of amputates my life rightnow but I'm at the same time happy that I could participate in the gaming stuff that I did those last years. But I wish I could dl it more full force.

Just a few weeks ago, it started to get much worse....again.. (June 2014). I've been in fear ever since. No revolutionary treatment in sight, I'm affraid out of my wits that I will somehow give up sometimes.

This is very serious. The sound cuts trough my head like a jetplane now and there is absolutely no prospect whatsoever to a cure.
It's somehow strange to think that as far as I can tell, this has no longer anything to do with my broken hairscells in the middle ear. I'm sure the ear damage is a part of it but I can't understand why it becomes worse and worse every year.

Since I started having it 15 years ago, I never wore any headphone anymore. I made sure I never went to noisy places, I made sure if I play games or make music, it is never "loud".

I'm normally NOT suicidal at all. I LOVE life!. I like doing what I do, but if ever something would happens to me, you sure make sure you blame this damn tinnitus that has made me insane.