This is part of a series of ongoing OCD episodes, which I will post as they happen. This is live, stream of consciousness. It happens. Often. Sometimes the subjects are different.
Why is it no one else seems to understand noise, the way sound works—on people. Maybe just people like me, maybe I am alone in this. Well, I am currently alone in this as it is happening just to me without anyone else… I don’t even have words.
Noise is… defined differently to me. A radio on in the next room, that can barely be heard. It is the worst torture to someone with OCD—because my mind has to know the content of everything. But I certainly—as I work, write, whatever the hell I am trying to do right now—don’t want to know the content of whatever is being transmitted from this radio. But the noise, the sound, is so slight the part of my brain that obsesses is pulling at me, asking why it can’t know the words and content and everything coming out of the radio. I, my whole self, am in hell. It is hell.
And I wonder why someone would turn on a radio so close to me—someone who thrives in silence. They make earphones. They have made them since pretty much the inception of recorded and/or transmitted sound. They were invented so everyone can be happy—the one wishing to consume the audio, and the ones around who don’t wish to.
It is careless, and lack of carefulness is the worst quality in a person. Never was I asked if this radio is bothering me.
I am not confrontational, I will not ask for it to be turned down. Why? Because that spends capital with the other person listening to the radio. It’ll start a fight, I’m selfish, I need things the way I need things—I’ve been through this constantly, so I have those finite chips to spend, and I don’t wish to spend them now. As well, I don’t have the energy. I didn’t start this day with the energy for any of this. My energy to exist—to do things—needs to be grown from within. It does not exist in still life waiting to be activated—I cannot just turn it on. It is a process, that—along with many other things—requires quiet.
Note I question whether people are actually listening to the radio actively or if it is that dreaded background noise people in this hell seem to… I don’t know, need? Do they need this? Does anyone need this noise?
Is it that no one values silence? Do people even value anything, or do they just… do things?
I understand this seems childish. Fully. Thus another reason for not doing anything about this hell, but letting it exist.
Noise. Sounds. Sound. Audio. Things I did not ask to penetrate to my eardrums and into my brain. But there it is, in my screwed-up brain. My brain doesn’t process these things like others do, that I am sure of. To others, it is just sound. Irrelevant or relevant, one decides and treats it as such. They pay attention or don’t pay attention.
MY BRAIN—WITH ITS OCD—PAYS ATTENTION TO EVERY SINGLE STIMULI. EVERY ONE!
I can’t stop my attention from wandering to stimuli if it exists. It needs to. There is no compartment certain sounds—in this case—go where I don’t pay attention to them. No, I am stuck, with a brain—stimulated—that wants to know.
TURN IT OFF!
Why not? Why? It’s not needed, and it is hurting someone, and no one but me knows this. Oh others could know, and the reaction would be the ultimate in distain. My own worth would be in question. Wouldn’t it? Certainly not worth risking it.
Go ahead with your radio. It’s your world. I’ll just keep living aside it.
I don’t get to live in my world.
That is not an option.
Somewhere there is quiet.