Three Problems With My Hearing 2020-01-23

For as long as I can remember I have had tinnitus. It is basically a cross between a hiss and a steady tone in my head... though some folks seem to have it much worse. I have heard sound files of what some other people claim to hear and it is just awful. It sounds to me like a wacky professor screwing with the knobs on his crazy machine in a 1950's scifi movie. Perhaps something like The Man In The White Suit. That would drive me nuts in no time. In fact a few years ago there was a Dutch woman who was euthanized for her severe tinnitus. Not everyone seems to think it was an appropriate decision, but then it isn't their heads that have to listen to that noise.

The second problem is hyperacusis. This causes fairly regular sounds to be amplified, or at least interpreted as much louder than they really are. For example I find washing dishes or putting them away in a cupboard to be really loud and usually wear earplugs if I will be around dishes and cutlery for more than half a minute. To me the noise may as well be hitting me in the back of the head. It also seems as though petroleum engines are of particular pain to me. Part of that I am sure is the fact that oil burning engines are such a resource drain, but part of it is just that my head interprets that noise as being axcessively loud. As a result all the trucks, four wheelers, snowmobiles, UTV's, dune buggies, ice augers, chainsaws, and heavy duty vibrators in my neighbourhood are pretty painful for me. I'd like to move to a quiter place, but where would that even be? If I were further out in the woods I would still be subject to recreational toys since I live in a fat rich country where people have tons of disposable income to piss away on garbage like that.

The third problem is a lack of a mental audio filter. You know how you can just ignore some sounds? For example, when there is a plane traveling overhead and you just "tune it out"? Yeah, whatever filtering system you have in your head to do that, doesn't exist in my head. I was born without it I guess. As a result I have to hear every noise and my head has to process every noise it hears. It can be pretty tiring to have your head constantly processing even the smallest of noises every second of every day. For example, this morning at 5:30am I was awakened by a mouse scratching at something in another room in the house. It was down the hall, down the stairs and behind the island in the kitchen, but it still woke me up. So now I am tired and irritated and that only amplifies the various audio problems... see where this is going?

My thoughts exactly.

If anyone knows of a place where one can live in relative silence, you just let me know. I need it. :-(