I hear the familiar sound of a bag of chips being opened, and my entire body freezes. My eyes quickly scan up and down the subway car looking for the culprit. I spot her on the bench across from me with a bag of Doritos that I would love to be eating myself. I scramble as quickly as the confined space will allow and throw on my headphones, but my iPod is dead. It’s just a space-age brick in my hand. My only armor against these everyday battles. I keep the headphones on anyway in a feeble attempt to fight back, but it’s no use. I hear the crunch of the of the first chip and the second. Tears start to fall before the third. My breathing is short by the fourth. I’m stumbling out of the car at the wrong stop before she can reach for a fifth. My mind is completely blank. My thoughts are empty except for the blackness of anger I can’t control.

 

This is the second time this has happened this week.

 

Misophonia literally means the hatred of sound, so it’s ironic that someone who loves sound as much as I do suffers from it. I live for music and can be found easiest at a concert. Fewer things make me smile wider than the sound of my young cousins’ laughter. Nothing calms me down faster than my name whispered by one person in particular. But I can just as easily list the sounds that have the power to break me. My kryptonite sounds, as I call them. The Internet calls them “triggers.” When someone who suffers from misophonia hears a trigger sound, they have an intense fight or flight reaction. Everyone reacts differently, but my reactions come in the form of panic attacks and “rage blackouts,” as Summer Roberts would say.

 

I didn’t know there was a name for what I was going through until a few years ago, when my ex-boyfriend sent the Wikipedia page as a sort of apology for some of the things he used to do to purposefully set me off. Before that, I simply thought I was crazy. I would find myself on bathroom floors unable to pull myself together after trying to enjoy a pint of ice cream during a movie with a friend. I still have scars on my arm from where I dug my nails into my flesh to keep myself from screaming. I’m still apologizing years later for yelling across the dinner table at my younger sister to chew with her mouth closed. If I had known there was a word for what was happening to my brain, maybe I could have expressed myself better.

 

I’m trying to make up for that now.

 

Misophonia, also known as selective sound sensitivity syndrome, is a neurological disorder that is perceived to be relatively rare. So rare, in fact, that I have had numerous psychiatrists dismiss me when I would bring it up. However, a quick Google search and some research shows that there is a growing community of people who suffer from the disorder. Being dismissed for something you can’t control is frustrating and isolating, and for years, I suffered in intense silence. I was so sick of professionals, friends and family members calling me “dramatic” or saying that I was making things up, that I shut down. I chose to avoid eating around people if I could manage it. I would try to fall asleep during car rides with friends when they would blast their music. I retreated into myself so far that I forgot that there was a life to be lived outside of my bubble of silence. As I grew older and more assertive, and once I had a name for what I was going through, I started to speak up for myself.

 

I have come to realize that my friends, while they may not understand, will gladly choose soft pretzels over popcorn at the movies if it means I don’t have to hide in the bathroom. They will turn down their music in the car if it means keeping me from having a panic attack. They will be more conscientious of their chewing if I kindly ask them to be. When people care about you, they are willing to be accommodating, but they can’t be accommodating if they don’t know you are suffering.

 

Writing this piece right now, in this moment, is not easy for me. Thinking about my trigger sounds and recounting the times when my reactions were the most severe shortens my breath. There are tears in the corners of my eyes, and I feel the very beginnings of a panic attack coming on. I can get through this, though; I have before. The next time I am having a movie night with a friend, and I am feeling particularly sound sensitive, I just have to take a deep breath and say my accidental catch phrase:

 

“I love you, but I hate that sound.”