Ignore me, I’m just rambling…

My husband has the most annoying habit. He whistles. His favorites are: Joy to The World, Happy Birthday, La Cucaracha, and the theme song from Jurassic Park. If he’s trying to be extra irritating, he will imitate a siren.

I love my husband. He’s smart and handsome with a smile so big, it creases the skin around his lovely brown eyes. But the whistling. The sound of it makes my fillings vibrate to the point of exploding from my molars, exposing raw nerves that are then rubbed with aluminum foil and then packed with gobs of dry cotton. This is what whistling feels like inside my body. Apparently, I have “sensory issues”.

I love this time we are living in because everything gets a label. Things that used to just make me quirky are now conditions. It is true that noise makes me feel a little crazy and I hate the feel of wool and I’m really sensitive to smell (my husband thinks I may have been a bloodhound in another life). I also really hate olives and if one so much as grazed my pizza, I will know because I will taste it’s vile trail. But does all that deserve a label? Apparently it does.

When I was a kid, I spent many nights on the floor by the toilet. I would be sweating and whimpering, certain that vomiting was inevitable. But I never vomited. “She has a sensitive stomach,” they said. Nope. Anxiety attack. And there’s a pill for that and most people I know take it.

Mental health is no longer split personalities and hobos that hear voices. Mental health is everything and everyone talks about it all the damn time, which is wonderful. Really, I mean it.

I suppose there’s a little sarcasm there.

Does it ever seem like we have all become afraid of each other? Like we are so worried that one sideways glance or wrong word will fling someone into a mental health crisis? Like we are all made of china, precariously balancing on a narrow sliver of sanity.

Maybe we’re afraid of ourselves. Afraid to feel.

They tell us not to feel stress or sadness. Only surround yourself with happy and calm people. Make sure you are grateful and fulfilled every second of every day. (To me, this conjures images of cult members in togas with blank stares and frozen grins).

I want to feel.

I actually enjoy wallowing in a little self pity now and again. I am amused by people who see the world through a dark lens but can spin it into dark humor. I like to bitch about the weather so that I can really appreciate a beautiful summer day and I love the feeling of slipping into my bed after a really long, stressful, shitty-ass day.

I’m a feel-er. I live in my head and I analyze everything. When you notice everything, you feel everything and inevitably, most things will irritate you.

I know it’s weird that whistling bothers me. I recognize that Costco makes me want to crawl out of my skin. I accept the fact that nausea usually equals anxiety and I am fully aware of my vomiting phobia. It’s okay that I hate the feel of the cotton balls in pill bottles and make my husband pull them out.

I know who I am. I know how I feel. I don’t need a label and I’m not going to break to if you don’t get me.

I like quiet. People exhaust me. I think all refrigerated leftovers smell like farts.

Tell me I have sensory issues. Tell me I’m strange. Or, just call me quirky.