Thursday, October 22, 2015

My Wikipedia diagnosis

Spouses. 

They're so often great.  And then they diagnosis your mental health using Wikipedia.

Good news:
There very well may be a reason why I'm so mental about noisy things.

Bad news:
The prognosis seems to be classical conditioning, which seems to be what I've been doing for 10 years now with this social experiment called "marriage."

The boy heard about this issue called misophonia on the radio the other day and promptly found out more about it on this snazzy little site (you may have heard of it?) called Wikipedia.  In my line of work, this is something we call "not a valid source."  However, we're functioning outside of the boundaries of my classroom here, so I guess all is fair in love and mental health. 

Proof for diagnosis:
*I hate the sound of chewing and drinking, especially when I'm sitting there minding my own business and someone dares to join me at the kitchen table and chews
*I hate the sound of breathing.  This doesn't work well when you're married and have to endure sleeping in one bed.  I cannot stress this enough.  Sometimes, the breathing...it is too much.  And then you feel like quite the horrible person asking the other person to stop breathing, thank you very much because good grief, you just want to go to sleep.
*Ticking clocks are horrid.  If you put me in a strange room with a ticking clock and ask me to sleep, you are asking to see what insanity looks like up close.
*Twitching is enough to send me over the edge.  The boy has this particular downfall when he is in a car.  I'll take my car and you can twitch in yours.  Please and thank you.
*Sniffing makes me want my own house, permanently.  Colds are wretched, wretched, wretched.  I'd rather be the only one who is sick rather than endure all of the sniffing, throat clearing and general hackiness of those who live with me.  It's hard to muster up any sympathy when all you feel is loathing.
*Whistling and tapping drive me batty.  And the boy is a whistler.  He's so patient when I maybe snap at him to STOP THAT INFERNAL WHISTLING/TAPPING BEFORE I TEAR MY HAIR OUT AND I MEAN IT, and I realize now that he's far to generous with putting up with me.

So.  Wikipedia - you may have something here.  Noises are right at the top of my I-can't-stand-it list.  As perfectly odd as this may sound, it's actually kinda nice to at least tangentially know that there's a reason why I feel downright nutso about inconsequential things.  However, there's doesn't really seem to be a cure.  Curses.

1 comment:

Fugitive said...

I can't stand a ticking clock if I'm trying to sleep. The first week we were in the hospital there was a clock on the wall in my room and I put it in the hall each night because I couldn't handle it grating on my nerves. I'd rather sleep in a room next to a train tracks than with an audibly ticking clock.