Imagine you’ve just spent three months worth of allowance to buy a ticket to a production that you’ve had the desire to see your whole life. You are so excited when the day comes that you forget to grab your earplugs, your headphones, your iPod and phone. You arrive at the theatre early and find your seat. As you are waiting for the performance to start, the seats all around you begin filling up. People with “quiet” snacks wrapped in packaging. You search your bag for your earplugs. Not able to find those, you search for your headphones. Desperately, you look for anything that could cancel the background noise. Finally realizing that you forgot them, you decide to tough it out. You’ve spent a lot of money and you’ve been excited for so long!

The performance starts. And so do the noises. All around you, people opening their candy, their bottled drinks and consuming. Consuming without regard of what it’s doing to you. You can’t hear anything else, just the chewing, the packaging, the swallowing, the twisting of the plastic caps on to the plastic bottles.

The performance becomes background noise. You try to focus on it, but you can’t. You can hardly even see it. You keep looking at the sources of the noise. Not on purpose, it’s like your head has a will of its own. And then, you just can’t take it any more. The rage, the depression, it’s all swelled inside of you. It’s consuming you. You’re shaking, you can’t breath, but you don’t want to leave. This was supposed to be an amazing experience!

You have only a few options. You could cry. Sometimes that helps get your emotions out. It wouldn’t be that obvious, you could keep it quiet. But it doesn’t take away the pain. The noises. So you pick your second option, which involves crying. You get up and leave. You’ve just thrown away three months worth of allowance and so much excitement. Yes. This makes you even more depressed. It makes it worse. But you can’t go back in there. Not with all of those noises. Not with all of those people.

***

Have you ever thought about how beautiful the world is? How about the things that make the world beautiful? What about sound? Now how about the absence of sound? Music is beautiful, and I thoroughly enjoy it. In fact, I’m listening to music right now. But honestly, a lot of the time, I would rather hear nothing at all.

My ears work fine - better than fine, actually. Which is precisely why I often wish I had hearing loss. Weird? No, not so much. See, I’m one of many living with a hearing condition called “misophonia” - literally meaning: “the hatred of sound.” It’s also referred to as “Selective Sound Sensitivity Syndrome” and is a condition that is still being studied. Honestly, we don’t know a whole lot about it.

But I can tell you what we DO know. I can tell you what I know. People with misophonia have “trigger” noises. When they hear these noises, they can tailspin out of control. Anger. Rage. Intense depression. Thoughts of suicide. Common triggers include: coughing, chewing and even breathing. All of those are triggers for me, as well as many others. The worst being that intense sniffle that’s like a snort - people do this to literally suck the mucus directly to their throats. When I hear this sound, I literally throw up.

Going out in public is HORRIBLE! Everywhere I go, there are sick people, there are people eating or chewing gum, there are people breathing heavily.

Many people think this condition is fake. Made up. My own family used to think that as well. I became very isolated from them, very depressed and even ended up hurting myself. I used to put in noise-canceling headphones and turn the volume up as loud as I could to try to damage my ears. I didn’t want to hear anything if it meant I had to hear my triggers.

Over the years, it’s gotten a little better. Each day is something I have to work SO hard for. I am always wearing earplugs or listening to white noise on my iPod. Going to high school is hard, but teachers do try to restrict food, drinks and gum.

Still, there are many days I have to go home and rewatch my lectures online because I couldn’t hear them over my white noise while I was there. Sometimes students make noises so loudly that, by the time I’ve turned the white noise up loud enough to cover them, I can no longer hear my instructor.

I try to go to performances to support the school’s drama program, but it’s difficult to get through them when the lady two seats to my right is popping and smacking her gum, the couple behind me are eating bag upon bag of M&M’s, and the gentleman just a seat down and over to my left is snorting like a pig.

I can’t eat dinner with others unless I have earplugs or white noise - enough to tune out the chewing, but still make out the conversation.

I can hardly go see a movie - I tried this yesterday with my mom. We got seats near the back in an area that was pretty isolated. Only a few people had bought seats around us. But then, as the movie was starting, the seats around us filled up with people carrying boxes of candy, popcorn and drinks! My mom heard me sigh and look through my bag for my earplugs and nearly start crying when I couldn’t find them. Not willing to throw away the money I had just spent, as well as the time with my mom, I decided to try to fight this one. I am grateful that the people around me ate so quietly. I considered it a success. I wasn’t overcome by miso. I won that round.

So, next time you’re out in public, don’t smack your gum like a preppy schoolgirl. Don’t chew your food like a cow chews cud. Don’t snort like a pig in order to suck the mucus right back into your throat. All of those are gross habits, anyways. And you never know who is around you and what they might be suffering from.

Misophonia is a serious thing. Your actions may lead someone to consider suicide. Be considerate of those around you - going out in public is a battle we have to fight all the time!