Tinnitus, the game, and pink elephants

I lost The Game.

The Game is a fun little pastime. Play it with your friends, if you can manage to describe it to them without sounding like an insane person.

The objective of The Game is simple: Don't think about The Game. If you think about The Game at all you lose The Game and have to announce it to those around you with "I lost The Game."

Its pretty fun, actually. A silly little mind trick where the objective is to not play The Game, and any interaction with it means that you've already lost. The truly magical thing about The Game is that if you lose, everyone loses, since you have to announce that you lost.

You can condense The Game into a less complicated, "Don't think about pink elephants!" At which point you will immediately start to think about pink elephants. Those cursed dumbo fucks will romp into your mind like a stampede of pink elephants.

Of course, its possible to not think about The Game, or Pink Elephants. Its just impossible to not think about them in the moment of hearing about about them. Being told, "Don't think about pink elephants," you either directly think about it, or think about how you aren't supposed to think about it; either way you have some sort of thought about the elephants.

After the initial shock of losing The Game, you will be frustrated because its the only thing you can think about for a good few minutes. After a bit, though, you'll get distracted and forget to think about it. You can go months without thinking about The Game, only for you to lose it as soon as you play a certain video game or hear the words, "I lost," in a certain way.

Enter Tinnitus.

First off, I have to say: Fuck tinnitus. Fuck it so much. Fuck it with a nine and a half foot pole that totally touched the Grinch. Fuck it with the force of a thousand suns burning into cold dead cinders. Fuck it. I fucking hate it. Fuck.

*Sigh*

Okay. For the people who know, I'm sorry. If you have the Big T, than even the title of this post might have been enough to set it off. I'm truly sorry, no joke.

For those who are free: You know that ringing you get in your ears after hearing a really loud noise? The ringing that fades with time and you feel slightly uncomfortable about it? Imagine the ringing never stopped. Ever. There's no known cure.

That's tinnitus. To be more inclusive, people can hear a "roaring" sound (like white noise), or bells, or clicking, or any number of horrible afflictions. My own personal hell tinnitus is an unstoppable 4,250 Hz sine wave in my right ear. Yes its really that high pitch. Yes it never stops. Yes its about as loud as someone talking directly into your ear. Yes it affects my ability to fall asleep.

Tinnitus is The Game. Its like the person who designed The Game decided that they wanted the punishment for losing to be 5 hours of depressed hyper-focus on a ringing you can't stop for anything.

If you aren't thinking about tinnitus you aren't hearing the ringing. Its still there. Its always there. But if you aren't thinking about it than its totally irrelevant, like the background noise of your air conditioner or wailing of the damned that comes out of my toilet at 4:12 AM every morning.

If you don't think about tinnitus, than that means that there's no ringing to remember when you look back at your memories. Its still there. Its always there. But if you don't notice it than you won't remember it.

"Hey Tim, if you don't want to think about it than the stupidest thing for you to do would be to write a god damn blog post about it, dumbass," you say.

Yeah. I'm more focused on my tinnitus in this moment than I've been for months. Thing is that I've had this ringing in my ear for over 8 years now. Its not nearly as debilitating as it was when I woke up one day with my ear constantly ringing for no fucking reason. I have many different coping mechanisms I've built up over the years. Strangely, focusing as hard as I can on the noise instead of forcing myself to fruitlessly ignore the pink elephant seems to help the most with my long-term feelings about the whole situation; its basically like meditating on pain until the pain ceases to be something you care about.

Point is that I can handle it. I've handled it for so long that I've forgotten what silence sounds like. This post is just catharsis; its a sad man complaining about a sound he can't stop. Its an angry man knowing that most doctors don't give a shit about tinnitus, since they have things that are actually important. Its the realization that the doctors are right.

I would give up so much to get rid of the ringing in my ear. I've tried so much. I've done physical therapy, taken medicine, gotten my ears cleaned, tried to "cancel out" the noise with a specifically made earbud, etc. It can be drowned out by other noise, but that's just trading one noise for another. I can't walk around with one ear totally deaf just because I decided I needed to cover my tinnitus up with an even louder noise (although I do this quite a bit in the privacy of my own home).

If you really want to feel bad all day, set up an earbud to ring at a 4,250 Hz sine wave in your right ear. Set the volume to about the same volume that you would set your music too if you still wanted to hear someone talking in the background. See how long it takes for you to cry.

I'm just blatantly complaining. I have no shame in this. I want sympathy from people that don't care. I want people to understand that this is something that's real and people deal with their whole lives. I want a solution, even though I might not live long enough to see it.

I want to stop playing The Game. Its not fun anymore.

-Tim

P.S. That last line makes me seem suicidal. Anyone who knows me even a little understands that this is the most incorrect interpretation of the situation you could possibly make. I want to live without tinnitus; if I was dead than there'd be no point in having it or not.