You’ll get used to it…

‘You’ll get used to it.” They said, and I waited. I waited for that Cat on a Hot Tin Roof click in my head that would mean it had settled into background noise.

But it never came.

Not for the seams on my socks, or the band of my bra, or the brace for my teeth or the glasses on my nose. Not for the elastic on my arms, or the lump in my sole. Not for the small pains or the big ones.

“You’ll desensitise with time.” They said.

So I gave it time.

More and more ticks and tocks, I poured them all into the deepening, widening hole of time. I gave it a year, then ten, then twenty, then thirty, and more. I gave it patience and space. I used distraction and all my tricks.

But still it stayed.

“There,” they said, “I told you all it would take is Time.” And I nodded, but I was still waiting.

I couldn’t control my senses. I couldn’t learn to get used to the clamour of this and that from the far-flung reaches of my body. I learned instead, that no one believed my body, so I shouldn’t either.

I learned not to pass on my sense’s lies to other people. Don’t spread lies. That’s important.

I was praised for becoming the filter between what I experienced, and what I emoted. Not deliberately. Not cruelly. Not selfishly or hurtfully or nastily. Just because they couldn’t see a world of difference, they did not know it existed.

I learned a lesson. I learned to listen to other people’s experiences. I learned that there is more to the world than my senses, there is more to the world than yours, and the more stories we hear, and share and believe, the better the world becomes.

You can teach me not to react, you can teach me to question my own needs, or you can teach me to trust my body. My raw sensory experience brings pains and joys. Help me minimise the pains, find me cotton, find me seamless, find me light, find me firm or loose. Help me by giving me permission not to put all that effort into ignoring it. Help me by empathising. Help me learn to be kind to myself.

If you cannot accept the things I cannot change, then you are doing us both a disservice.

I’ll share my world with you, its colours and its patterns and its perfect moments, if you’ll let me.

Published by Rhi

16 thoughts on “You’ll get used to it…”

  2. My auditory sensitivity was present from before birth when my mom could feel me jumping around inside her when she played the organ. It worsened at 16. No amount of raw exposure can “cure” it. I can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. My need to constantly stim to manage my anxiety won’t be stopped to please someone else. These are components of my neurology.

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    1. Perfectly expressed. I don’t think anyone would argue that someone less sensitive to sensation would get used to being repeatedly poked by a needle, or bothered by a scream.

      Thank you 💐

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  3. Reblogged this on Aspie Under Your Radar and commented:
    Absolutely beautiful. Just what I needed to read this morning – and I missed it, till now. I’ve been reading accounts by autistic folks, wondering why on earth it’s taking me so long to get through the books.

    These are my life, too. These are all about my life, too…

    But I stop. Stutter. Have to walk away, take a breath… and more. Let it all sink in, like rain in the desert that first sheets off into arroyos, flooding the gullies and washing to rivers, before the soil becomes damp enough to hold the water.

    Piecing my life back together, after being so deliberately fragmented, so intentionally segmented, compartmentalized, sequestered… this is not an easy thing to do.

    And it takes time.

    So, thank you for sharing the journey with me.

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  4. Silk is nice until it gets damp and bunchy and climbs up. Rayon is lovely and visually very interesting. But plastic of any sort on skin is/was/will be a torture. I gave up wearing underwear for 15 years until I discovered boxers with the seam wrapped in cotton. While I find the stimulation of skin in the world occasionally over demanding, in the end the other side (the utter sensuality) has made it worth it.

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  5. That’s why I now wear hearing protection in noisy places. I’m no longer trying to “get used to it”. It might decrease the fight-or-flight response but it’s still hard to concentrate. Just because an autistic person suppressed stimming and looked non-autistic, it doesn’t mean that the hypersensitivity is outgrown.

    Here’s a list of sound sources that may cause sensory overload.
    https://hanlinsblog.wordpress.com/2017/08/07/examples-of-sound-sources-that-may-increase-sensory-overload/

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  6. Is that one of the causes of sleep problems in autistic people? For sleeping, I sleep in a dark room. Light sources are distracting. I have to remember not to open my eyes. Even after a few hours, I couldn’t sleep. Temperature’s important too. I was hoping that I would get used to it. It makes sense because our senses tend to be magnified.

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