Tinnitus

Couldn’t’ put my finger on it, make it go away. The buzzing continued throughout the night and day and was relentless. As I staggered to take a pee in the darkness, I grabbed it out of my ears and it dropped to the floor.

I heard something fall to the floor and moved downward to retrieve it, Whoosh was all I heard and staggeringly I moved upward in a rush and threw myself off balance. I felt like I was underwater in the ocean or something.

The hissing, humming whooshing-continued incessantly as I’d shake my head like a good dog on my five feet journey to the loo. I nearly knocked myself unconscious as my balance suffered and I fell against the wall. It wasn’t even daybreak and I was feeling hungover—from the orchestral sounds of the ringing, roaring, rumblings inside my head- the space between my two ears. Hadn’t had a lick of juice or h20. What is happening?

As I leaned against the wall, the sound of my own heart beats pulsated my mind to a point of wanting to scream. No wonder sleeping is so hard, so difficult, so impossible a task for me and my ears.

I am darn tired.

Exhausted.

I peed. I think. I don’t really remember. I carried the one pod back from the loo and reached for the other one that fell under my pillow. I put them both back in their nightly places-in my ear canal and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Are these tiny little apparatuses that I shove in my ears the solution to my problem or part of the problem? I am so tired I cannot even think straight anymore. The instructions indicated there were noise cancellation abilities on these oval-shaped balls I stuff in my ears. Why isn’t it working for me?

There are hundreds of reasons my ears are full of noises I cannot adequately explain.

Loud noises make me jumpy, so do quiet ones. I am in a constant state of fight or flight and can ‘go off’ at a moment’s notice. My tempers follow along closely with the whooshes, buzzing and ringing.

I ruminated at the fruitless attempts to get to the bottom of the noises in my ears, my head. Specialist after specialist determined there was nothing “there.” Nothing wrong with me. Nothing of note in between my ears.🙃

The fatigue I feel when I roll over in bed while tossing and turning as the sounds in my head slosh along with the pounding beats of my own heart. All this orchestrated noise going on in my head while I am supposed to be getting my nightly shut eye.

No wonder I look like I haven’t slept in days and the rapid-paced aging shows brutally in the wrinkles of my unrested face.

White noise, noise cancellation. Nothing works.

One specialist recommended I meditate.

Okay.

What have I got to lose?

My perception is that quiet is always accompanied by sound— buzzes and roaring, depending on the day. I have been told it is all in my head. (not ears). Now, while that is one theory, as I understand it, the phantom sounds are instead generated in the brain, in an area called a “cortex.” In some cases, the auditory cortex can affect areas of the brain that control attention and emotions.

Good to know.

I do feel like crying.

I’m exhausted.

I’m tired all the time.

Makes a lot of sense.

The diversity of the noise makes it unable to broad-stroke a one-size-fits-all therapy. Translation: There is no universal cure. What one person may hear can be entirely different from what another may articulate. Tiny tubes inside my ear canal didn’t really provide the sense of balance I was hoping for.

Even if and when I got a real night’s sleep would I even notice the difference. I am not sure I even know what normal is. The sounds trapped in my ears range from hissing, clicking, humming. Kinda creepy if I stop and think about it—which I do frequently because the sounds are always there. When I am at my most quiet, sans the sleep part, is when they speak their loudest hisses and roars. Even when I am in a crowded public place, they always come along with me. And if I am being honest, I have made friends with the hisses, buzzes and such, as I am certain at this point in time, they are here to stay.

Can I block them out? Believe me. I have tried. I have become so accustomed to their presence, I thought about giving them children names, you know, so we will stop fighting one another all the time and try to just get along. There seems little sense in fighting the self all the time.

White noise? One remedy that distracts and contracts the little buggers into submission. Then again, experience has taught me that suppression can only result in something bad—like a roller-coaster-roaring payback collection of hisses and buzzes.

Heavy sigh. Meditating moments of futile attempts at dis-arming the hisses, buzzes and roars only makes them want to rear their sounds louder when I lay down my head at night, hoping for significant rest at the hands and feet of the bugs in my ears range.

Life is good.

Life is challenging.

We all have a cross to bear one way or another.

I am considering getting a larger size bed in order to provide the little creatures in my ears with some creature comforts. Am I trying to ‘buy them off’, bribe them to shut up, stifle, be a little more quiet.

Well.

Yes.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

In the meantime, I will be-friend the little sounds that never go away and marvel at the tenacity with which they choose to stick around in my head, trying relentlessly to throw me off balance.

I’ve come this far and am not ready to surrender just yet.

Sweet dreams.