Noisy wherever

-




I woke up this morning because my eyelashes rubbed against my bed sheets, noisily. I have heard the term "deafening silence", but I have no notion what silence sounds like. Nothing is ever silent - to me. Perhaps if it were, I wouldn't have this extreme insomnia. I was once suggested ASMR videos to cure my insomnia. Sort of like suggesting having a rope on your neck while you sit on the electric chair!





My extreme sensitivity to sounds is socially crippling me (along with my other neuroses). I love my daughter's voice from another room. But when we are in closer proximity, her sweet voice grates my nerves. Feels like she is shredding my scalp like cheese. My son has quite a loud volume for so little a person. I don't even want to think about my husband's voice. He laughs quite a lot - lucky for him, but his laughter makes me want to jump around like crazy frog! He also sings, as a stress-relieving exercise- badly by any damn standard. Which sets off my stress cycle. Sometimes, I can hear my neighbors' private activities- fill in the blanks yourself. Catch-22s all around me!

Years ago I read Erich Segal's Doctors, wherein the newly-minted med school students each discover that they all have one chronic condition or another. My favorite character in this book, Bennett (I forgot this name too, of course) explains that this is a common malady with first-year medical students and even has a name- that I don't remember, naturally and that he has something more serious than that. I am sort of like that everyday. The week after my surgery, I could smell everything in a large radius. I could tell you if a visitor to the next room just had a coffee or if one of the people in the corridor smoked in the last few hours. Almost everyone smokes here, by the way! Going into a bathroom or toilet that was used in the last hour was pure sensory overload. Thankfully, that passed soon enough. And then I had a fall and my surgeried brain had a concussion on top of everything else. So, these days are constant discoveries and interesting coping strategies.


                            

What I have has a name- Misophonia. Not that it makes a bit of a difference- it having a name, but as always, just knowing the name of something out of order is better than just vaguely saying that it is.
I found this very appropriate, annoying video from my search and I do not even want to play it to check my blog links. It grates on my nerves and straightens my back. To spread that joy around, I posted it here-> Misophonia Explained

What is the point of all this harangue, you ask? I don't know and I have stopped asking for the point in doing everything I do. Nothing is the point. If blogging gives some clarity while I am waiting for more efficiency, perhaps that is all the point there is. And joy is in such short supply as it is, so why not grab it with all immediacy, before it fizzles away? The reason I am a Computer Scientist is it excites me to create something from my ideas alone. I don't know of any other profession where I can be as effective in creating something useful (hopefully),perhaps other than writing. And with such little human interaction. That is the best and loveliest part of it.

Through all that, I need to stop labeling myself as this and that. Here is some more good advice to self.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Swan Song

-
Image
  I started this blog last year when I was supposedly recovering, but feeling worse. Turns out, I was. So, after a complete history of increasingly depressed posts, I did get myself fixed and my silence is due to the slow, painstaking process of getting out of the resident anger. Here is my swan song to the long depressing soliloquies! Hurrah! For my readers and for me. My next project will not be here. I meant to merely let the silence speak those words, but many people are indeed in my last year's shoes. If someone happened upon my blog, here is a slight recap> 1. I had experienced blinding brilliance after struggling and then fixing a chronic, magnifying brain issue. Great! 2. Doing too much too soon, fell down a long flight of stairs and seriously broke my newly fixed head. 3. Was told to shut up and carry on by too many people and wasn't taken seriously until I was 70% blind. 4. Residual anger was boiling over onto every adult in my life even after another surgery. Many...
Read more

Eidetically bad memory

-
Image
       Blinkist and Balance are two useful things on my phone - which is normally used as an e-reader. I woke up this morning to an audiobook Winners take all by Anand Giridharadas . I won't elaborate on the book, beyond that it is well-written and emotive.  Just had a revelation that I am better off meditating whilst in bed, rather than reading about the current state of the world or any coming apocalypse, aka the news. So, after the usual morning necessities for the kids, I sat down to my writing. As described above, my mood already was pretty down in the dumps. Then I read the news, as I am a creature of habit- once, years ago I felt good reading the news, so now I read it every few hours even if it makes me miserable. The first iteration was the usual nonsense about idiots, idiots in power, depressing things about things I care about, and topics falling under the 'who gives a fig' category. My brain collapsed later this morning though, after readi...
Read more

Where's the hope?

-
Image
I show you the Pulitzer Photo A dying child and a waiting vulture A man behind the lens of the image He died, as they did too, two unnaturally. When you won't eat your dinner- I remind you of that little child bent of hunger, aged by strife But your bit of leftover get to another bent child before another vulture? How? You ask- and I'm a thesaurus of 'Not knowing!' I cry about a child killed on a picnic I watch his dad look for a new bag, Find it and destroy himself in grief And I look at you and cannot be glad that you are here and I am me We watch them die because of luck of birth I have you and live now by chance God might be a palatable reason But I have none, and so you don't Why? You ask- and I tell you 'Not Always!' Execution in daylight Armed girl demanding justice, and not vengeance and I don't know why not! What other justice can there be A life for all those lives, is against law of the jungle that is human One predator decides how the prey lo...
Read more