Overexposed

This is me.  Baring my soul.  It's easier to do when I'm sitting at Starbucks and you're wherever you are, and I don't need to look at you.

For a while now I have been thinking about writing this.  Many of my friends have heard me share bits and pieces, and they take it with varying degrees of acceptance, humor, and belief.  I love them anyway.  Because it's weird.  Like face blindness and other random mental disorders diseases conditions, a lot of people don't think I'm telling the truth or think it's just an excuse or something everyone lives with. 

Here's my reality: It hurts to cut my toenails.  I can't wear nylons.  When headlights shine in my eyes when I'm driving at night, I want to hit something.  I don't like the taste of the candy coating on brown M&Ms.  When my kids are poking me and people are whispering and the overhead light is flickering and someone behind me is tapping his foot and my necklace is laying wrong on my neck, I feel like someone is inside me clawing to get out.  I have a sensory processing disorder.

Most of my life was spent in the dark about it.  I thought I was just sensitive.  My parents thought I was just being dramatic.  People saw me and thought I was fine, but I knew that I wanted to run and hide.  Or hit someone.  Or throw up.  Or just sit down and cry.

Several years ago, my husband bought a book for me.  It is called Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight.  He bought it for me because he loves me and because he thought it sounded exactly like me.  I read it.  And I cried.  For the first time, I discovered that it was real, that I was real.  That I could trust what I was feeling.  And I learned that while I couldn't cure it, I could cope with it.  And I could tell people about it.

I've spent the last several years doing that.  Telling people.  Often it's in an apologetic way: "I'm sorry, but I can't eat that--it's too spicy for me."  Sometimes it's in a defensive way: "Well, it's spicy to me."  Other times it's in a pleading way: "Please.  I'm overwhelmed right now.  I need a break."  For the most part, people are kind, and usually they want to learn more about it or say that maybe that's the same thing their nephew has.  Some people even want to know how they can help.  But there are others (of course there are) who say, "Yeah--those things bother me too.  I just shut them out."  or "Well, if you try hard enough you can get over it." or even "Right.  You just always need things to be your way." 

Listen, that's hurtful.  I didn't choose to be this way, and I promise you that I would change it if I could.  I wish I could eat spicy things or onions.  It would make me feel like less of a problem.  I wish I could sit in a hot tub.  I wouldn't miss out on the fun or wreck other people's plans for the evening.  I wish I could "tune out" the nylons or the necklace or the pretty sweater.  I would be able to wear the latest fashions then.  I wish I could be around my kids when they're "just being kids" and not feel overwhelmed.  I would feel like a better mother.

At the same time, there are things about it that I would never give up.  Did you know that Asiago Cheese Bread from D&W has so much flavor that it doesn't need butter or anything else?  Do you know that the red M&Ms are actually a bit sweeter than any of the other colors?  Do you recognize the smell of snow on the air days before it falls?  Can you smell spring when the first thaw begins?  Are you able to picture exactly where you set something down or the song that was playing the last time you were in this spot?  Can you (almost always) notice when someone gets a haircut or new glasses? 

When people ask me what it's like to have a sensory processing disorder, I never know what to say.  I never know how to compare my response to a "normal" response, because I've never had a normal response.  Everyone has days when they're overwhelmed, and Disney World puts everyone over the edge at some point in their stay.  All I've ever known to say is that it's real, I have it, and I need a break. 

Then I read The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan.  Without knowing it, she gave me the words to explain--to myself and to the people around me--exactly what a sensory processing disorder does.  On page 64, Grace Winter is recalling the Empress Alexandra and the passengers she met aboard.  She writes about memory and refers to a scientific explanation for why memory is faulty.  Then she suggests that "sometimes . . . the failure to remember is not so much a pathological tendency as a natural consequence of necessity, for at any one moment there are hundreds of things that could take a person's attention, but room for the senses to notice and process only one or two."

Ah.  There you have it.  That is normal.  The senses notice and process only one or two of the things happening around them.  But, in my "abnormal" brain, my disordered sensory processing system notices all of the hundreds and tries to process all of them at once.  Then I have to shut down or explode or melt down. 

It's real.  And lately I've been overstimulated 99% of the time.  Today I'm wearing my lightest necklace, and I still feel a bit panicky.  My skin itches and my shoes feel like they're cutting off my circulation.  Something burned in the kitchen at Starbucks and the coffee has been sitting in the carafe for too long.  The guy next to me is wearing a cologne that doesn't suit me, and there's a drip in the sink.  It would be helpful if they turned the music down and if the girls at the table over there stopped their chatting.  The bathroom door needs to be oiled, and I wish the only open seat when I arrived didn't have windows on both sides of it.  Oh, and to top it all off, the people waiting in line are kissing.  Loudly.  I'll manage--one of the open tabs on my browser will give instructions for a friend and me to make a weighted blanket to help me center again, and I found really great perfume that seems to get me back to zero--but it's a daily battle. 

I nearly called this post "Living in This 'Too Loud Too Bright Too Fast Too Tight' World," but in the end I chose something even more appropriate.  Overexposed--that's how my nerve endings and my brain feel every day.  And that's especially how I feel now that I've shared all of this.  I'm telling you it's hard to be a mom with a sensory processing disorder.  It's hard when I recognize it in my middle daughter and when our responses clash.  But I'm learning to cope.  And I'm learning to share it with others just like I would tell them if I couldn't hear well and needed them to speak up.  There's no cure for what I have, but if you'll be patient with me and if you'll believe me when I share my heart and if you'll ask me before you hug me, then maybe we'll both discover that there are so many wonderful things that my disordered brain can offer.