I'm in my thirties now and I'm beginning to see the repercussions of my lifestyle coming back to break me down, bit by bit. My sedentary lifestyle has caught up with my and my body is telling me to fix it. I need to, I want to get better. But I hardly have the motivation and I'm in between therapists at the moment.
A few weeks ago, I developed tinnitus, otherwise known as "ear ringing." This sensation has not stopped, and I fear never will. Some report to have tinnitus only moments at a time or in stressful siutuations— for me, it's always there. It's not always prominent and it's not always audible when other noises are happening. But if the environment is quiet or my ears are covered by headphones or a cap it goes full-blast. According to a single Google search, apparently the constant tone in my ear is somewhere between five and ten kilohertz. In conversation or play or while loud audio is around me it is hardly existent unless I try to concentrate on it. But it's always there, and always will be, forever.
It's been one of the most difficult things I've had to parse in a while.
I have a neurological disorder that makes silence...uncomfortable. I simply don't like having silence around; I need usually a TV on in the background, or a podcast or some talk radio going to help my head stay clear. I know it may sound odd to those of you with a more normal brain, but activity sooths mine — information is how I get my dopamine. For my entire adult life from my adolescence on I've had something in the background. A small portion of my years have been attributed to silence and just that: putting one of my children to sleep at night, or taking a calm, cold walk through a fresh snow and hearing nothing bnunt the crunches beneath and the flutter of wings in the distance.
I took advantage of it before, and I wish I hadn't. I know that it was something I didn't appreciate because at times it would cause me almost physical pain. I would be laying in bed at night with nothing but a constant stream of thoughts that is nearly impossible to stop, and sometimes in situations where I had no control over it. I would count to a thousand or recite some songs; doodle in a book or read if I had the chance until I was so tired I was forced to fall asleep.
However I've found a small solace in the constant Kilohertz. When I need to focus away from something or when I'm needing to re-focus my attention, it's there. If I can find a place to calm myself and take a breath or three, I can find a way to pry through the layers of my audible interpretations and focus as hard as I can on the one constant, reliable thing around me. At family events when the children are being too loud or if I'm going through an uncomfortable medical procedure I can try to block out what else surrounds me and shift my attention to between my ears and to the top of my spine, at the base of my scalp and back of skull where the sound lies most intense.
At night, it helps me sleep. It's not as effective as a white noise machine or one of the many sleep-aid podcasts I've discovered over the recent years, but it's something to grab on to. It's probably the most comforting thing I've found in this ordeal is that I might finally be able to find a sleep aid that isn't prescribed by a doctor or grown in a field and then delivered to me underhanded in a parking lot.
It's there now, as I type this. As I wear my headphones the ringing is trapped in between them. If I take them off my computer's fans and the machine noises of the house and other devices take over, allowing some distance from the noise. But although I grieve for the loss of a friend I had never truly appreciated, I think I have found a new one."