Games Without Frontiers

Lawnmowers. Cars with open hoods, revving their guts out. Blow dryers. These things terrified me as a child. They were overwhelming; the sounds seemed to invade every cell in my being, producing a sort of blind panic, and the sense that I was eroding. The fact that these things didn’t seem to bother other people hinted to me that it was an issue best left unspoken.

Of course, it wasn’t just sounds that caused this reaction. It could be anything related to the senses. Certain words. Perfumes and colognes. Certain food smells. Some textures. Colors. The shower, even–water dropping loudly onto my head from high above? No way. I was bath-only for a long, long time. Very often it was simply someone’s presence. (Try explaining that as a child. Even as an adult, it doesn’t quite fly, for most audiences.)

Teacher’s notes on my report cards and comments from friends and foes alike only underlined the oddity of my little radar. She’s extremely sensitive… You take everything too seriously!… Why are you like that? God!

Being in a crowd or even just out running errands always required downtime, or I’d be a wreck, buzzing with words, images, fleeting ideas, attitudes, scents: information. Way too much information.

(The last time I visited my best friend in New York, the subway trip from airport to apartment filled me up with so much static that I went straight into her bedroom, closed the door, lay down on her bed, covered my head with a pillow and listened to Beethoven’s Sonata #21 on repeat for a good thirty minutes.)

I came up with ways to work around these massive triggers. You have to live, after all. But it probably took until I was thirty years old to really feel like it was seamless. The work-arounds are too numerous and too complicated to explain*. But I recently used the analogy that it’s a bit like wearing massive body armor–like wearing a robot, really–reading the data as it comes in and having the armor react accordingly. [*Also, then you end up saying crazy shit like "wearing a robot."]

Anyway, it was right around that time (isn’t it always?) that I stumbled across the concept of HSP, which stands for Highly Sensitive Person. A phrase which makes me squirm in my very soul. Mortified, I read the description. And then another. And I clicked on related links. And–you see where this is going, don’t you?–everything I read described me. I took this test and, well, aced it.  And while I highly resented the ’70s-flavored pop-psych feel of most of the sites on the topic, as well as the concept of yet another “thing” that we should all be “aware” of [quotes only semi-ironic], I also, no lie, cried with relief.

Because it put to rest the last bit of worry I had that maybe I was just a total fucking lunatic.

(I mean, I may well be one, but at least this particular issue isn’t what clinches it.)

Apparently HSP became an established concept sometime in the late 90s. And apparently I’m not alone in this. Havi talks about it quite a bit and does a stellar job of respecting that she needs to do things a certain way in order to be happy and whole. Ije is another of my people. As are more and more of the people I’m connecting with–but the key is this: they know they are this way, they’ve figured out how to work with it, and they take care of themselves. Because the alternative ain’t pretty. It’s a lot of beastly behavior that drives people and most living things away. I’ve known a few of them. I’ve been a few of them.

Those sounds still scare me. Too much data just freaks me out. But most of the time the safety assurances I’ve made for myself (“It’s okay, sweetie, I know it’s loud, but you are totally safe”) circumvent any actual bad feeling. And I’m learning to talk about these situations when the assurances don’t work. It’s been interesting telling my nearest and dearest about this. Usually there’s some disbelief. Which I totally get. But I’m finding that the more honest I am about all of this, the easier life gets. There’s a tremendous freedom in knowing what you’re working with, but none so startlingly sweet as when the what is you.

(It took me ages to write this post. I’ve been frankly terrified of doing it. But I’m glad I did. Thanks for reading.)