Monday, Monday

Refusal
Originally uploaded by AdiaMichelle

Bah dahhh, bah dah dah dah... (video)

It's still cloudy and rainy. There was a patch of sunlight streaming down through the skylight at work for about 10 minutes. Since then, clouds clouds clouds. I'm contemplating buying a sun lamp. I might need to start popping Vitamin D. Are my knees starting to bow? More than they do, that is?

I have no excuses as to why I'm not actively pursuing Acting Things right now. I can't even blame it on the weather. I suppose I could say that I'm taking some time off to try other things and figure out what it is that I really like to do with my time (other than sleeping and eating and reading).

And now, I will continue reliving those few weeks when I held my own illicit listening sessions to my sister's tape of Tragic Kingdom via Last.fm.

I'm Not Alone

I have an issue. Ok, I have many "issues," but one in particular has caused me a whole lot of grief from as far back as junior high or high school.

I can't stand mouth noises.

I can't tolerate lip-smacking, gum-popping, tooth-sucking, finger-licking, chip-crunching, apple-mushing, or repeated sniffing. All the sounds of mastication are abhorrent to me. A lot of people say, "Well, yeah! It's rude to chew with your mouth open." That's not what I mean. Bad manners are annoying. These sounds, the sounds of mouths and breathing and liquid sloshing around tongues, produce a very particular reaction in me: I get violently angry, and I want nothing more than to smack the offender in the face to get them to stop or flee the room immediately.

I used to describe the sensation as "wanting to rip the person's tongue out and wrap it around their head to get them to stop." Not pretty, not rational.

Riding the subway with a gum-cracker is the 9th Circle of Hell. If I don't have my iPod to drown out the sound, I have to close my eyes and attempt to concentrate on something else, just to quiet the "beast rocking in the corner," to keep from screaming or doing the gum-cracker serious bodily harm.

I keep quiet about it. When I have mentioned it in the past, people look at me blankly, and I can almost hear their thoughts: "Cuh-razy. Plumb crazy." I mentioned it to my family long, long ago. They thought I was being melodramatic. They often tease me by smacking their lips.

Until today, I thought I was the only one who flew into a violent rage when she couldn't escape from those sounds. I thought I was alone. I honestly thought that there was something very, very wrong with me. I'd given up thinking that there was anything I could do about it. I figured I'd just have to exercise enormous self-control every time I was around someone with a noisy mouth.

Turns out I'm not alone.

Selective Sound Sensitivity can occur in people of all ages, and can have a sudden or gradual onset, often around puberty. [ding!] Most often cited objectionable sounds include lip smacking [ding!], chewing [ding!], swallowing, breathing, [ding! ding!]...

Reactions can include rage [ding!], sadness, panic attack [ding!], indecision, loss of cognition, physical itching or crawling sensations, urge to flee, or fight [ding! ding! ding!]. Some people have to make vocalizations in response to the aggravating sound [I totally pop a piece of gum when I can't escape; it helps], others wear earplugs in an attempt to avoid provocation [I've considered doing this on the subway, but felt like too much of a dingus to do it].

When I found this Yahoo! Group and read the description, I started to cry. It's such a relief to know that my reaction to these noises is not something I manufactured for whatever reason. I kept repeating to myself, "It's real. It's real." I may now be an official resident in Crazytown, but at least the population is greater than 1. Scroll down to the responses on the bottom of this page, and you'll see just how many other people have Selective Sound Sensitivity.

So what happens now? I don't know. I'll keep researching, and I'm awaiting approval to join the Selective Sound Sensitivity Yahoo! Group. Some message groups have tossed around therapy ideas, from "pink noise" CDs to Prozac. I certainly hope it doesn't come down to drugs, but honestly, I won't rule them out.

For now, it's enough to know that I'm not the only one.

"When are you going to get married and have kids?"

Wiped
Originally uploaded by AdiaMichelle

I've always dodged the "when are you going to get married and have kids?" question. It irked me. As if it's nothing to find a decent man who'll be a good father and provider and won't make you want to kill him every day for the next 30 years. I deflected by saying, "When someone asks me," or, "I really don't care." And I thought I didn't; care, that is. No man was clamoring for my hand in marriage, so kids weren't even something to be considered.

After reading a blog this afternoon (that I will not link because it's not necessarily Mother Approved®) about how young women who secretly want to have kids should stop fooling themselves with the "I'm focusing on my career" nonsense and settle down in their 20s because easy baby-making time pretty much ends at 35, I got walloped in the face with the fact that, yes, I do want to pop out a rugrat or two. I always assumed I would, at some point. But suddenly the deadline for "some point" is no longer some distant horizon. It's in clear focus and it's zooming up on me like a "Last chance for gas" sign on a desert highway. I want a husband and kids, but where does that leave my romantic notions of being in love and taking time just to be with my husband before the children come?

Let's say I meet someone tomorrow that, tomorrow, asks me to marry him, and I, in a totally uncharacteristic move, say yes. If we troop down to City Hall, get our marriage certificate and get married by the Justice of the Peace, we could, technically, start having kids next week; if we got pregnant that soon, that is. It could happen, or it could take months, or years. If it takes years, we may only get one out before my body says, "Nope! Sorry. Shop's closed. Forever. Adopt. (Africa is the new China!)" But let's say I do get pregnant pretty quickly. I have known my husband for a matter of weeks, and now a child is on the way. We barely know each other, much less how we'll handle a child together. And what about being in love? I've never been in love (never allowed myself to be in love?). I'd like to know what it's like to be head-over-heels crazy for someone.

Of course, that scenario is completely hyperbolic and hypothetical. But I always dreamed that I'd have at least two or three years of just the two of us before any babies came. That might not happen now, if I get married at all. See, here's the 500th worry: what if no one wants to marry me precisely because they want kids and they think I'm too old for baby-making? Men can, of course, keep making babies until they die. So there's nothing stopping a 40-something man from marrying a 20-something woman to be the father of his children. And that leaves those of us in the middle shut out in the cold.

Yes, I know I'm overreacting. I know I'm overreacting, please don't leave any comments saying, "You're overreacting." Ultimately, life is what it is. If I'm single for the rest of my life, I'll make the best of it. What other choice do I have? But I'd feel like I missed out on something fun and special, and I'd always wonder what kind of mother I would have been.