Imagine a world where you can hear every sound around you. Every single sound.
You are sitting in your bedroom, reading a book. The window is open. You have music playing. The AC is running.
The mattress creaks as you move slightly. Cold air flutters from the rumbling ceiling vent. You finish a page of your book, hear the scratchy slip of the page as you turn over to a new one, the tap of your fingers against the hard book cover.
The birds outside your window are singing - multiple birds, multiple songs. The wind passes through the trees; the leaves rustle loudly. A thin tree limb skims itself against the brick wall of your house outside - a painful scratching noise.
You hear the music on your radio - the volume is up quite loud, but not loud enough to ever drown out all the other sounds grabbing for your attention. Electricity is buzzing from the radio. It drives you nuts that no one else can hear it. Then again, you're glad no one else can - a noise like that could drive a person up a wall. (You laugh to yourself at the thought of a buzzing radio literally driving a person up a wall.)
Your door flings open, bangs against the wall, squeaks as it turns back a little. Your youngest siblings run into your room, laughing and screaming. The sound pounds against your ears like the noise of fireworks going off. You cover your ears and yell, not out of anger, but just to cover up the noise with your own. That's one way that you cope with loud noises - you snap your fingers, tap your shoes against the floor, clap your hands, sing a song that's stuck in your head. Anything to help shut out the noise of the Outside.
You experience noise overload on a daily basis - from bustling customers and squeaky shopping carts at the store to loud siblings running around your house. You want to run away and hide from the noise. Noise is an awful thing, you tell yourself.
Ironically, you need a white noise machine to fall asleep at night. Otherwise, the loud noise of silence keeps you awake. Nice to see that Aspergers has a sense of humor.
