Transmission #6: Bob Marley, Imperfections, and The Anxiety Umbrella

OK.. So now that I've posted all my Facebook novels from the past few weeks, let's get on with our regularly scheduled program...

My anxiety levels are generally through the roof... Like pretty much all the time. There is this umbrella of anxiety that is always open and it is blocking out the sun from shining on all my other feelings. It makes them so dim I can barely recognize them in the darkness underneath my anxiety umbrella. One of the ways in which I cope with this and attempt to ease my anxiety so I don't have a stroke is by listening to music. 

This morning while I was getting ready for work, I opted to listen to Bob Marley songs on iHeartRadio as my station of the day. I generally like listening to Bob Marley and similar old school fight the power reggae songs whenever I want to feel happy and stress-free. Something about the constant rhythm and the steel drum takes me to my beachy happy place. But it didn't work today. Why? Imperfections. Subtle, miniscule, tiny flaws that ruin my joy.

The original version of "Sun is Shining" that's kind of a crude, rough, unpolished recording was the second song that came on. This song features an instrument called a melodica which basically is like a keyboard you blow into to make music. It overwhelms the song and is so high-pitched it ruined the whole thing for me.

Here is the version I'm talking about...

Sensory overload is a big deal. As I mentioned in my post 1st Transmission: The Awakening Has Begun, I turn the radio down when I need to focus. I turn everything down when I can't think at times when thinking is necessary because the sounds of everything else combined with the things I'm trying to get out or make sense of are all just too much. I also just can't deal with sounds that are overwhelmingly loud in obnoxious ways because they hurt my ears.. like I can actually feel the sounds shredding my eardrums and killing my hearing cells.

Anyway, once I had gotten over this and began to relax again, this live version Bob Marley medley mega-mix came on that had snippets from all his most popular songs. It was great.. until there was this one part where the music suddenly went all sharp and flat in ways that made me cringe.. like a tiny hurricane disturbing my calm reggae sea.

All I could do was focus on that 2 seconds of imperfect disharmony and it sucked. It only takes 2 seconds of chaos to disrupt my serenity for hours... Maybe even days. It's awful. All I wanted to do in that moment was cry because this is the theme of my life. My extreme critical nature ruins everything I love all the time. 

It occurred to me that when John Elder Robison was on NPR, he was talking about how his job as an audio engineer for concerts used to be finding the imperfections in sound and music and fixing them. But after he got his brain shocked during the therapy treatments, he was finally able to enjoy music without constantly focusing on the imperfections. This is why he now builds custom bikes and whatever.

At first, my opinion on his life events and choice to have this therapy was that it sounded like he had a cool job and then they fried his brain and now he has a way less cool job. But after I let that marinate for a minute, I realized that he loves music and the electroshock therapy treatments allowed him to love it more. They allowed him to feel it more and experience it without feeling this innate urge to recognize and dwell on tiny flaws and imperfections. He wanted to love music more and continue experiencing it in this new way so he had to quit his old job.

I want that. I want that more than I want air. Thinking back to that day when I heard John Elder Robison on NPR, I remembered that was actually what resonated with me enough to finally want this formal diagnosis and the help that results from it. Feeling other people's feelings and experiencing empathy and not cringing when people hug me would be cool.. But I still think it's sort of useless. Music though... Music is never useless. 

I want to feel the beauty and the magic of it in a deeper way without the flaws ruining it all. I would just like to go through one day without noticing every imperfection... Just one day where I can just enjoy without habitually criticizing... One day where the one thing that stands out doesn't bother me so much that it destroys the rest. One day of peace where the anxiety umbrella is closed and put away in the closet.