So, my girlfriend started doing research on Adult ADD, which I have. I take a bunch of medicine for it and all, but I also tend to freak out very easily about non-important stuff which doesn’t seem to be related to the condition.
Some of it is psychological, I’m sure. That’s why I have a competent therapist, and spend time each week on the couch. But there’s other things that seem to just be how I’m hard-wired.
Being awakened from sleep is particularly interesting. I completely lose it and start yelling at the person before I go conscious. I believe it’s an actual physical attack. Back in college somebody woke me up, and I sprung into a fighting stance ready to pounce before I came to.
I also have an insanely delicate nose. If there’s even a slightly unpleasant smell that’s noticeable to me, I lock onto it and it bugs me to no end. I visited Jessica and the moment I walked into her apartment a pungent fruit-like (but not in a good way) odor hit me like a haymaker. I waited a good hour before saying anything. Her place is immaculately clean. I walked around like a bloodhound trying to find the source of the smell. She couldn’t smell it at all.
She poked around online and found this condition that seems fits me perfectly. It’s called Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). It basically means that I’m wired up to be hypervigilant toward sensory stimuli. Some of this is good – I can experience things with more physical intensity than others. Like a shower feels like absolute pleasure in the morning. I never want to leave.
SPD talks about being freaked out by textures like cotton. I mean, that can’t be a coincidence. Also how certain sonic frequencies are uncomfortable. There are songs that literally make me nauseous. And not just Phil Collins solo stuff.
Here were the clinchers that I knew it was me – SPD people who respond to light fingertip stroking across the body as if it were the greatest thing on earth. If making love is a ten on the pleasure scale, fingernails lightly touching my skin is a high nine. No exaggeration. It’s pure ecstasy to me and I writhe around like a nut.
Also, there is a tendency for people with SPD to use baths as soothing mechanisms to calm down and achieve intense pleasure at the same time. I love baths like nobody else you know.
I know what you’re thinking. “I love baths and light tickles too!” No you goddamn well don’t. You like that stuff. I LIVE for this stuff.
In short, I’m a total spaz. Break a glass, and the noise it makes will send me nearly running away at full sprint. Give me a neck massage, and I’ll be willing to propose. Play me any of the Mozart violin concertos, and I’ll go off into a fantasy music hallucination and not come out until the final note. And throw a cotton ball or piece of corduroy my way, and I’ll curl up into the fetal position and shake.
What’s the solution? I’m hoping it’s 90 milligrams of Valium every three hours. Sadly, that’s never the recommended treatment.
I guess I just have to learn how to be normal. Good luck to me.
