Sweet Yet Sour

7 – Silence

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 | Weird Things | 2 Comments

I long for silence; I ache for it, but not for the reasons you might think.  I do not wish for quiet because of the crying baby, or the screaming cat, or the noise of the city.  I wish for it because even if I go to the quietest place on earth, it will not be silent for me.

One day four years ago the quiet and peace that I used to enjoy ended.  Sometime in the fall of 2004 a ringing began in my ears that has not ceased since.

Mike and I were in the throes of planning our wedding when the ringing began.  I simply woke up one day to discover that no matter what I tried, I heard a ringing in my ears.  I kept thinking it would go away, but after two weeks I couldn’t take it anymore and went to see my doctor.  He looked at my ears, tested my hearing (which was fine) and decided I needed to see a specialist.

The Ear Nose and Throat doctor (ENT) that I went to see also tested my hearing (which was still fine), looked at my ears and could not see anything wrong.  We sat for a while discussing possibilities and finally we drifted into the topic of the wedding planning.

Our wedding was not what Mike and I had discussed initially and was not what I had pictured for myself.  Mike and I had discussed a quiet, small wedding in the mountains somewhere with only a few close family members attending.  It was with great regret that due to the pressures of certain family members we did away with our original plan.  We began instead on planning (and paying for ourselves) a larger wedding.  It ended up not being my dream wedding, but it was a nice wedding anyway.  I have fond memories of the ceremony and the lovely Butterfly Pavilion where we had the wedding to accommodate the larger crowd.

Without knowing it, the stress of this had caused me to begin to grind my teeth at night.  I awoke every morning with a huge headache and facial pain, but did not really understand the cause.  Finally the ENT decided that I had been grinding my teeth enough to cause the ringing in my ears.   He suggested I see my dentist about a teeth guard that I could wear to cut down on the symptoms of my nighttime jaw clenching.

The dentist fitted me with a guard and I began to hope that I could once again listen to Bach and Mozart with pure enjoyment.  I also really looked forward to being able to sit in a quiet room and not hear the ringing in my ears.

Sadly, although the teeth guard stopped the headaches and facial pain, it has never been able to resolve the tinnitus (the medical term for ringing ears).  After four years I am mostly used to it and have stopped crying about the lack of silence.  But every once in a while I really wish I could stop the ringing for just a moment and have the world be quiet once again.

Number 8 – My Tattoo

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 | Weird Things | 2 Comments

I have a tattoo that I got in 3rd grade.  I was young and I got it without parental consent, but I didn’t have any choice.

One day while we had some free time in Mr. Smith’s 3rd grade class, my friend Torrey and I were playing pencil wars.  I’m not sure if everyone else did this in elementary school, but we played pencil wars a lot.  One of you holds your pencil horizontally between each hand and the other person uses their pencil to flick and attempt to break your pencil.

It’s not so much a test of pencil strength as it is a test of knowing how and where to flick the pencil so that the other pencil will break.  My mom always wondered why I came home with broken or really short pencils – I knew better than to explain that I was wasting pencils playing games with the boys.

As luck would have it, I won the pencil war that day and was able to break Torrey’s pencil in half.  Unfortunately for me, Torrey was a sore loser.  In a fit of anger, he used the pointy end of his broken pencil to stab me in the elbow.

The pencil tip broke skin and actually stayed stuck in my elbow.  Mr. Smith was busy with another kid at the time, and I was a pretty tough girl, so I just stayed at my seat and watched my elbow bleed until he was done.

When Mr. Smith was free I calmly walked up to him, asked for a band-aid and showed him my bleeding elbow.  I was whisked to the nurse’s office, where she was unable to remove the pencil tip, and Torrey was taken to the bad kid corner.

The result of this is my only tattoo, a small black mark on my right elbow.  It’s difficult to find in amongst the freckles, but it’s there and I’m proud of it – I got it after winning an epic battle when I was only 9 years old…