It’s so loud. I hate these parties. I hate the strobe lights, and the smells, and the sounds, the bass, and how everyone is talking to me. There are too many people. Too many voices. My headphones drown out some of the volume from the outside, but everything else is on full blast. There’s another rave inside. The rave doesn’t stop when there’s work to do. The rave doesn’t end when it’s time to leave. It never stops. Ever.

There isn’t always a booming bass, but there are always voices talking over me and over each other.​ There are a couple radio stations playing at the same time. Different songs battling for the top spot. The sirens blaring and other people talking nearby and the kids snickering in the corner, and the one kid clicking their pen. I hear the beep of the elevator and the ringtones and vibrations of everyone else’s phones. I hear it all. I hear it all at the same volume, what’s inside and out, what’s real and what isn’t. I smell the fumes from when they fixed the pipes a month ago. I smell those gross trees with the white blossoms. I smell the air as it differs from the outside. Everyone is so close to me regardless of actual distance. We’re all dancing and sweating at the same rave. I feel the tag on my shirt if I haven’t ripped it off yet. If I have, I feel where it used to be. I feel the dust hitting and moving across my skin. I feel my hair as it tingles my neck. I feel the breath of people near me. When they actually touch me, my goodness if they actually touch me, my body rejects that touch. I reject that touch like it’s a foreign body entering my immune system. I see the fluorescent lights, I almost feel them. I don’t know what they are doing, but I don’t like them. I see the random depictions of lights and colors in my eyes flashing with static.

Now I have to try to comprehend what you are saying. 

I can do it, it just takes a little longer.

At a rave, you don’t expect to be able to have a conversation with someone. Why should I? I’m always there. I am too close to the lights, the noise, the smells, the touch, the people, and everything else, yet I’m distant and alone.