sounds

Part of me wants to respond to things i have read in other peoples blogs. To comfort, to use this space for other people and I am working hard to remind myself, that first and foremost, this space is for me. That I am asking teh world to make a few inches for me and that this is the space that i want to claim as my own. I am reminding myself there are so many other spaces - email, twitter, msn, phone, that i can use to be there for other people, to be that person people can rely on. I am trying to remind myself that i get to be important too - and its hard because my habit is to put other people first, and sometimes, that can be damaging to me. I need to remember that in order to take care of people and to be of help, i have to be enough to be ok for me first - that if i am not that, i will drop the ball when it is most important.

I am sensative to sounds - i always have been. This morning, 5 am, i was awake, but in that relazed state when you aren't fully in the world and are partly in your own head. That slow wake up place that is almost like meditation. Mom walked by my room, to go sleep on the couch for a bit. As she walked by she said "i cant get any sleep", quietly, to herself. I had earplugs in but i heard "its almost a quarter to 8"...and i panicked thinking i was late to work.

Simple sounds - a beep, ding, or tone from the tv or horn, honking in the street - cause my anxiety to spike to near panic attack levels. I can usually get it under control pretty fast by identifying the sound and reminding myself there is no threat to me from a commercial or stupid driver out on the street. But the simple fact is this is something that happens to me, on a daily basis, every day, from morning to night and even in my sleep.

Part of why i dont sleep is because of this reaction i have to simple every day sounds - i wake up from a sleep, panicked because mom coughed or the students MSN beeped, or the heater turned on.

Its not something i know how to control or fix - not something i understand truely why i am like this. I think it relates to an overall feeling of safety - to always being on alert because i always feel as if there is something bad or dangerous that could be headed my way. It may be a leftover from the abuse - that i am still expecting people to come at me with some type of abuse, something i can be overpowered with, some pill or new torture.

I was thinking while i was driving the bus today. I look back at some of the things i experienced - things that didn't happen to me but rather that i just watched. Being 9 and the one at the scene of an emergency (unconscious person, surrounded by adults, waiting for an ambulance on an island) and being the one in charge of the scene - the one giving teh instructions, providing care, and being the one with the most knowledge about what needed to be done. And in situations like, in watching my sister in the hospital, in knowing things were wrong with the people i cared about - not once did someone ever tell me that it was going to be ok. That things were going to be fine.

I was a kid. I was afraid. I have the normal fears and anxieties that little kids have. But i was gifted and I was well read and i could speak and understand at a level closer to an adult. So no one ever thought that i would need the reassurance you would give a child. Because i think at times, they would forget that i was a child.

When i shattered my finger, the dr talked to me like any normal patient - telling me about bone spurrs, subcuteaneous pressure, fractures, pain control, temperature sensativity. Because these were things that second grade me could understand. But no one told me it was going to heal and be ok.

No one told me it was ok to hurt, to be scared, to be a child. Just because i could read medical text before i was 10 never meant that i had the feelings of an adult. I didn't.

It seems that was forgotten. Now as an adult, these are things i am stil trying to learn. Its much harder now. The world is bigger, scarier, and sometimes things aren't going to be ok. And sometimes the simple words you would give a child are hard to give someone you see as an adult.

I wish i knew these things back then.