Uncommon sense

Most of us, most of the time, make use of five main senses - sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste. I have already mentioned previously that I have a somewhat compromised sense of smell. The rest of my senses are completely normal. Except my eyesight, which is buggered*. Despite this buggered-ness, my eyesight is my single most important sense. For most of my life, I hadn't really appreciated how much vision dominates my world, particularly compared to hearing. It was only when I started to talk to other people a little more about their interactions with the world that it began to dawn on me that I might not be in the middle of the bell curve.

This week, for instance, I was chatting to a friend, who asked what podcasts I listen to. Podcasts? Listen? Why would I do that? I read things, I don't listen to them. "But what about while you're cooking?" No, nope, that doesn't make any sense. If I'm cooking, I like silence. How else can I listen to the voices in my head?** I even find the sizzling sounds in a frying pan irritatingly noisy and distracting. I can genuinely think of few occasions, other than when I'm driving, that I would choose to listen to something rather than read it. (I don't read while driving. I have standards.)

The same friend also expressed bemusement that one of her other acquaintances would be happy to write and text her about mental health struggles, but will never speak about it in person, out loud. This strikes me as perfectly normal and sane. Writing is soooo much easier than speaking. Who would choose to actually talk about their feelings if they could write it down instead? You don't think I actually say most of the stuff I write here do you? Trying to talk about feelings gets me quite flustered and confused and I'm liable to go pink, fall over my words and/or start crying. That, admittedly, might be more about my psyche than my preference for the visual over the audible.

Leaving my inability to talk about my feelings to one side for now, it has only been in the last year that I have discovered that not everyone remembers things visually. How do other people know the way from place A to place B without being able to see it in their head? Unless I can picture the route as I've seen it on previous occasions, or picture the map of a new route, I can't imagine finding my way. As for spelling, if I couldn't see the word on the page in my mind's eye, I'm not quite sure I'd ever be able to spell anything that had more than five letters. And then I discovered that BigBear has almost no mind's eye at all, and appears capable of spelling, navigating and thinking without any recourse to a facility that seems utterly fundamental in all three to me.

As I said, I'm beginning to suspect that I may not be entirely representative of the rest of the population.

You might suppose that, depending as I do entirely on my eyesight, I would be particularly sensitive to lights, and find excessive visual stimulus A Bit Much. But in fact, it's completely the opposite. I like bright lights, clear illumination, and strong contrast. The more my eyesight degrades, the more I want everything to be bright and well lit. I hate the growing need to wear glasses for everything. I hate struggling to pick out fine details, or subtle shades of colour. I need to see everything, at all times, in crisp, clear detail. I can't think straight if I can't see properly. I am reminded at this point of GrannyBear, who claimed not to be able to have a phone conversation unless she had her contact lenses in. Like me, if she can't see clearly, she can't think clearly.

On the other hand, my relationship with my hearing is very different. I don't know if not wanting or needing to listen to things constantly is related, but I simply find sound very difficult. It's not something that I can put my finger on, but I'll try. I dislike intensely too many different sounds occurring at once, so a crowded room with multiple conversations makes me anxious and uncomfortable - not because of the people, but because of the cacophony. Even thinking about it is making my scalp tingle and itch in discomfort. Collecting LittleBear from school the other day was horrific. There were children running around and shrieking, as children do. I was unable to make any sense of the words my friends were saying to me. I could hear them, and I knew what the words were, but I couldn't do anything with them. The random extraneous noises overrode any processing my brain attempted, and the voices I wanted to hear just became more noise, my ears and brain feeling congested with a surfeit of stuff coming in.

The sound of clattering cutlery, or metal pan lids clanging against their pans can make me feel overwhelmed and filled with rage. The sound seems too big for my head, stretching my capacity to hold my own thoughts in place, as it inserts itself into every gap, squeezing everything else out. My ears feel engorged, ready to burst with excess noise. I become flustered and unable to process the rest of the world around me, or my own thoughts. It isn't physical pain, but noise is emotionally painful. That's as close as I can get to an explanation, and even then I feel as though I'm missing something essential about my experience.

In essence, I'd like to live in a brightly-lit, but very quiet house. Which is somewhat unfortunate, as BigBear is more or less the diametric opposite of me, and he'd like to live in a dimly-lit world with a soothing hum of voices or music accompanying him at all times. Fortunately we love each other and are able to compromise. I follow BigBear through the house, turning lights on and the radio off. He hasn't strangled me yet. Of these things are happy marriages made.


* This is something of an exaggeration, but I have early signs of glaucoma in one eye, gradually detaching vitreous coagulating into cloudy lumps that obscure patches of vision, plus the usual loss of accommodation that accompanies aging resulting in now owning four pairs of glasses (distance and reading, at home and at work). No, before you ask, none of this can be fixed with laser surgery. The "best" surgical option would involve removing the jelly of my eye and replacing it with saline. I would then develop cataracts and need cataract surgery as well. "Best" option. Ha.

** I have a near-constant internal monologue. I hold long conversations, debates and expositions in my head all the time. I never shut up. My internal monologue is quite capable of adopting other accents too. I was surprised when I first discovered this was not necessarily true of other people.