Body 03 Apr 2006 08:42 pm
arrrrgh
You know, sometimes I get really sick of being a delicate fucking flower.
I just got back from an abbreviated stint at the gym. Here’s the deal — as you might recall from putting yourself through severe sleep deprivation in college (I certainly do), if you get tired enough, your perceptual abilities go haywire. It may be that your ability to construct a soundscape goes kablooey. In my case, all sounds seem like they come from no more than about a foot away from my head. And it doesn’t take an all-nighter for me to get that tired these days.
I can get to feeling aggressive and frantic after a little while of this, not least because the sounds appear to be originating from a point within my personal space. And while intellectually I know that this is an illusion, my instincts are all fired up to push the noises away. I have to be very careful if I want to function politely when I’m so overloaded. It’s very unpleasant.
Unless, it turns out, I’m at the gym when it’s busy and there’s an aerobics class going on. That’s when “very unpleasant” becomes “eighth circle of hell”. Seriously, folks, I thought I had a solid 50% chance of blacking out or throwing up. I was ready to hit one middle-aged woman over the head with my water bottle just to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. I stuck it out for about fifteen minutes before rushing into the locker room to lie down on a bench. There, at least, the hellish din is sort of muted. I’d become very pale.
I wish I could describe this phenomenon in a way that’d convey its incredible awfulness. To do it justice, I think I’d have to describe an equivalent in the sense of smell. (And I suspect that might put Mrissa at least off her feed!) It’s a lot like that; this aural experience is invasive in the way that a truly terrible smell is invasive. Plus it’s disorienting.
I am never, ever doing that again. I don’t think even earplugs could have made that tolerable. I’ll work out at ten in the morning, or ten at night, but never seven in the evening. Never, never, never.
Anyway. That was exciting. Whew. Man, is it ever good to be home. Nice, calm, quiet home.
on 03 Apr 2006 at 10:02 pm 1.trinajo said …
woah, that sounds like an awful experience. your description of it enabled me to understand it as well as i am able to, and i feel frustrated and overloaded for you in that respect. there are many others, i imagine, who are affected in different ways and for varying reasons by our noisy ways. i know when i lost the hearing in my right ear it would give me severe headaches to be in places with loud music and lots of loud talking–like an overload of my ‘good’ ear. hope you find a way to successfully manage/compromise. =)
on 03 Apr 2006 at 11:28 pm 2.Cam Sculpin said …
Thanks!
I’m usually okay, if I don’t run myself down too much. Looks like I ran myself further down today than I’d realized. Whoops. My body temp plummeted when I got home, too, which is another sign that I’ve pushed it past my sensible limits.
That’s interesting about the overload of your good ear. I wonder if your brain was working overtime trying to process the noise without the benefit of stereophonic sound. Cool. I mean, unpleasant, but cool.