My Autobiography

Chapter 2: Sensory Experiences

When it comes to my senses, it can become a little more 'complicated' than others. With a sensory disorder, I tend to feel things much stronger than others in regards to the five senses. I have such a hard time trying new food because of the taste and the texture, or the way it feels, inside my mouth as I chew on foods that I am having for the first time. To provide an example, I was at a nice dinner with my family, and we were served everything that we ordered, but there was a food item that was served that none of us had tried before. It was a crab cake that was topped with chives, and even though I had never really liked crab, I figured I would give it a try, So I asked my Father if I could try a very small piece, and while he was surprised that I was asking, he took advantage of the situation and gave me a small bite sized piece. When I inserted the piece into my mouth and started chewing, there was a lot going on. The texture was creamy, which isn't my favorite. The taste was extremely fishy and vile, which made me feel nauseous as I kept chewing. Eventually, I swallowed, but everything looked distant afterwards, and I went for my drink and gulped it all down in a matter of seconds. My Father whispered in my ear that he could tell I didn't like it, but he was proud of me for trying something new, which still to this day doesn't happen very often.

Another sense that really bothers me because of my sensory disorder is smell. A proper example of this was one time when I went to visit my Grandfather in his nursing home. This nursing home was very well experienced in training and had excellent ratings, but when you walked into the nursing home entrance, it smelt awful. It wasn't the people themselves, but it was the overwhelmingly strong fumes of sanitizer and other disinfecting chemicals that made the place smell so bad. It made me wonder if they had used gallon after gallon just for the entrance area, because the further you got away from the entrance, the less potent teh smell became. While I was still feeling sick to my stomach from the entrance, I went to see my Grandfather, I said hi and we had our fun little visit. Played chess with him, chatted about life, giving me his 'wisdom' as any other grandparent would, and then it was time for me to leave and get some other errands done. When I went back to the entrance area to exit, the strong, horrific smell came back, but it was much stronger than it was. I became so nauseous that my entire body went numb. I told my Father that I may need his help getting out of the nursing home, since I couldn't really feel my legs. Of course, he helped me get out, and once we got into the fresh air I was able to finally breathe again and not be so nauseous from the strong smell of sanitizer and other disinfecting chemicals. I did sadly vomit in the garbage can by the car before we left, but I think it was only because the smell had finally worn off, but my stomach was still quite upset from the potency of the smell.

In short, all the five senses for me are much more complicated because of my sensory disorder: I smell things from greater distances and smell more potent than normal, my taste is extremely sensitive, my sense of feeling is either calming/soothing or irritant/disgusting, and I can hear from a long distance. While I don't mind some of these sensory issues of mine, others I tend to wish didn't affect me so much, but it just happens in a way, and I'm not too ashamed of that, if I'm to be quite honest. I see people who have sensory overload, which is something I also have, where if there's too many feelings from different senses all at once, you become very frustrated and overwhelmed, and cause an angry outburst, or you just 'shut down'. My definition of shutting down may always differ from person to person, but I see it as a retreat from the current world to your own mind in order to calm yourself down. Why do I explain it like this? I explain it like this because I too 'shutdown' at times if things are too upsetting, frustrating, or overwhelming for me. It's just what I do, and it happens a lot when it comes to my five senses. I'm not ashamed of it though, because it helps me accept my sensory disorder for who I am. There shouldn't be a moment where I get upset because I shut down over too many flavors of food, or all these people are yelling at me for no reason, or even as far as someone or something hitting me. While all these feelings are so overwhelmingly stronger than they should be for me, I take pride in accepting those feelings, and if it leads me to needing time in my 'own world', then I will do so to ensure that I do what is necessary to keep myself sane. It's the least I can do to keep myself who I am today.