My name is Paul -- I'm a singer-songwriter with misophonia. You can imagine the conversations I have every time it comes up. My first showing of the issue was when I was a young teen, and I started eating dinner in front of the TV instead of at the table. My parents were fine with this, but maybe to keep a bond going, chose to join me in the TV room for dessert. A few arguments later about the inevitable clanking of the plates when my father ran his bowl of ice cream down to the drizzles led to a hearing exam at the hospital (in 1990 -- guess who had perfectly normal hearing?), then to constant tests of my patience and exasperated arguments about it all being in my head. I've had two live-in relationships -- at some point, both women started eating their meals in separate rooms or when I wasn't home, to spare me the noises. Plastic plates don't even help, so I don't even bother anymore with them. I pay a hundred dollars more in rent than my roommate does so I can have the bigger room -- not because I need the space, but because it places me on the opposite end of the apartment from the kitchen. My roommate closes the kitchen door when he does the dishes. I just put out, like, my umpteenth album of love songs, and realized that I've been putting off writing about my condition for way too long. It's really difficult -- just working on the first song I've broken down numerous times. I could use the strength of a community right now. Post edited by: paultab, at: 06/03/2011 09:09 PM |
