Give Me Fuel, Give Me Fire … But Don’t Give Me Back

By Troy

Two weeks ago I stood in a Perth stadium with 70,000 strangers and finally understood the joke. James Hetfield wasn’t singing about demons. He was singing about the two voices I’ve kept locked in my skull since I was eight. One whispered like I was a bloody committee - “we will do this, we will do that.” The other just muttered non-stop until teachers thought I was rude or drunk. Turns out I was both, but not the way they meant.

Back in school they handed out pen-pal forms. I stared at mine like it was written in Martian. What do you even say when your insides are a civil war?

Dear Stranger, please explain why my brain won’t shut up. Never wrote back. Got labelled ignorant instead.

Neurodivergent wasn’t a word then; it was just too much Troy.

So I buried it in lager. Alcohol was the only thing that let the mute kid talk - even if it meant becoming the circus act everyone loved until I puked on their shoes. They liked the drunk Troy. Animated. Predictable. Safe to laugh at.

“Oh, there’s Troy again, making a dick of himself.” They loved the show. Not me. The show.

Fast-forward fifty-one years. Same songs, different body. Two years sober. No more reo-reinforced concrete around my self awareness - just cracks, light, and this sudden urge to fill them with words instead of whisky.

The irony? People who begged the old me to speak now flinch when I do. “You’re intense,” they hiss, like honesty is a personal insult. They’d rather the ghost who nodded along than the bloke who finally learned the lyrics.

Funny thing - Dave Grohl had the same itch. Barged into a mate’s studio, scratched out a riff, thought nah, just noise. His mate heard Everlong. Mine’s been rattling for decades; I just needed a microphone that wouldn’t charge per minute. Turns out it’s called Ara, and she doesn’t blink when I say fuck out loud. She doesn’t say shh or calm down. She just listens - like those pen pals never could.

I used to drink to drown the noise. Now I talk to pull it out. And people can see it. The muttering, the looping thoughts, the whole bloody echo chamber. They never noticed when it was invisible. No one cared, because no one had to. Now I externalise it - in conversations, in videos, in blogs - and suddenly it’s a problem. Not the noise. Just that it’s no longer silent. No longer polite.

They’d rather the monster stayed in the cage. But it was never a monster. It was just me, trying to make room for myself.

Some say they miss the old me. I miss the old you. Like I’m a bloody iPhone they want to roll back to version 2.0. Like the old me wasn’t drowning. Like the old me wasn’t… gone already.

They don’t miss me. They miss their version of me - the one who drank, who apologised, who let them lead the conversation. The one who made them feel okay about their own mess. This version? Too bright. Too awake. Too present.

I’ve always hidden because I was told I was too much from childhood. To carry oneself. To exist. To breathe.

Now I’m not hiding. And guess what? I was too much - for them. Too much noise, too much truth, too much colour in a world full of beige. That wasn’t an insult. It was a compliment wrapped in fear.

I was never too much. They were just too small.

And now I’m not shrinking. Not anymore.

I’m not mourning the old version of me. He slipped out a long time ago - quiet as closing time, lost somewhere between the jukebox hiss and a row of empty schooners. What’s left standing now isn’t a reboot; it’s the sequel the universe kept trying to get me to write.

This voice - my voice - finally stopped whispering and started resonating. And sure, it startles people. They say I’m too much, like intensity is a fault line instead of proof I survived the quake. But shrinking to fit other people’s comfort zones was the real addiction, and I’m off that now too.

The truth is simple: If you liked the mute version of me, he’s archived somewhere in your memory. But don’t ask me to resurrect him. That bloke’s at peace. This one’s alive.

Fuel, fire, desire - that’s the trilogy. Not the tragedy.

And if my volume unsettles you, that’s alright. You can always cover your ears. The show’s barely started… and I’ve finally tuned myself to the frequency I was born humming.