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| © Talkaholism.org |
I'll never forget the day an ambulance driver pulled me aside after bringing my father home from the hospital.
The man looked agitated, and for a moment, I thought something was wrong. Maybe there was a problem with the paperwork, a bill, or something else I needed to take care of.
After all, when you're responsible for managing practically everything in your household, someone pulling you aside usually means there's another problem waiting for you.
But no. This poor man had something entirely different on his mind.
He looked at me, hesitated, and said, "Your father is very..."
Then came a rather impressive pause.
"...interesting."
Oh, I knew that pause.
I knew exactly what that pause meant.
My father had apparently spent the ambulance ride giving this man the full experience.
I looked at him and said, "That's not the word I'd use, but thanks for the compliment."
At least I made the poor guy laugh.
And honestly, I couldn't blame him. He'd probably just spent an entire ride listening to my father and was searching desperately for a polite way to describe what he'd endured.
What the ambulance driver experienced for one trip, I'd been living with for most of my life.
Because my mother wasn't the only talkaholic in our family.
My father was one, too.
And while their excessive talking could be exhausting enough on its own, the sounds my father made because of his health problems eventually became something I dreaded almost as much as the talking itself.
When Both Parents Have Something to Say
I've written quite a bit about my mother's compulsive talking, repetitive questions, constant explanations, and lifelong habit of whispering to herself.
But my father certainly wasn't the quiet one in the family.
He could talk endlessly, too.
Growing up with two parents who always seemed to have something to say meant that silence wasn't exactly a familiar household luxury.
And when you're a child, you don't necessarily recognize how unusual your family environment may be.
You simply grow up within it.
Your parents' habits become the background of your everyday life, and you adapt because you don't really have another choice.
But as I got older, those habits became increasingly difficult to tolerate, particularly when my parents became elderly and ill.
By then, I wasn't simply their daughter.
I was running the household, looking after their needs, handling responsibilities, and doing much of what needed to be done for my younger sister as well.
My sister has always been deeply interested in animation, and much of her attention goes toward that passion. Meanwhile, the less glamorous responsibilities of everyday life have often fallen to me.
Someone had to keep things going.
Unfortunately, that someone was usually me.
And when you're already exhausted from taking care of everyone, even small annoyances can begin feeling enormous.
Especially when those annoyances aren't occasional.
They're constant.
The Sounds That Never Seemed to Stop
My father had hypoparathyroidism and other health problems, and he also had a collection of repetitive sounds that became part of our everyday household environment.
Throat clearing.
Nose blowing.
Coughing.
And more throat clearing.
It seemed to go on constantly, day and night, for years.
I understood that he wasn't doing these things deliberately to irritate me. He was an elderly man with health problems, and I knew that some of what I was hearing was connected, in one way or another, to his physical condition.
I wasn't sitting there imagining that he woke up every morning thinking, How can I drive my daughter crazy today?
But understanding that didn't make the sounds any less difficult to hear.
There's something about repetitive human noises that can become incredibly aggravating when you're exposed to them continuously.
A cough here and there is one thing.
A throat-clearing sound that happens over and over, throughout the day and into the night, is something entirely different.
And after years of hearing those same noises, I began reacting to them almost before they happened.
I'd hear him clear his throat and immediately feel myself becoming tense.
Then I'd wait for the next one.
And the next.
And the next.
Sometimes the anticipation was almost as unbearable as the sound itself.
When Silence Doesn't Feel Like Silence Anymore
This is something I wish more people understood about intense sound sensitivity.
The noise doesn't necessarily have to be happening for you to feel affected by it.
Sometimes you're lying there in a perfectly quiet room, but you can't relax because you're expecting the next sound.
That was my experience with my father.
I'd be in bed, desperately trying to fall asleep, listening for the next cough, snort, or throat-clearing sound.
Even when he was quiet, I wasn't necessarily enjoying the silence.
I was waiting for it to end.
And that's a miserable way to spend the night.
I've since learned about misophonia, a condition involving intense emotional reactions to particular sounds. I don't claim to have been formally diagnosed, but the descriptions of sound-triggered anger and distress certainly resemble much of what I've experienced.
Back then, I didn't have a name for it.
I just knew certain noises made me feel as though my nerves were being scraped raw.
And because my father made those sounds so frequently, I couldn't simply wait for the irritation to pass.
It had become part of the environment I lived in.
There was no convenient off switch.
No guarantee of an uninterrupted night's sleep.
And no way to explain to an elderly, sick man that even though I knew he wasn't making those sounds intentionally, my own ability to tolerate them was disappearing.
Perimenopause Wasn't Exactly Helping
Several years before my father died, I was going through perimenopause.
And if dealing with elderly parents, household responsibilities, financial worries, and constant noise wasn't enough, my body apparently decided it would be a wonderful time to make everything even more difficult.
My sensitivity to sound became considerably worse.
I'd always been bothered by certain noises, but during those years, my reactions grew much more intense.
I call it sound rage because that's what it felt like.
Not ordinary irritation.
Not simply wishing someone would be quieter.
I'm talking about an almost immediate surge of anger in response to certain repetitive sounds.
I can't say exactly how much of that change was related to perimenopause, disrupted sleep, ongoing stress, or years of exposure to the same noises.
But I know the combination was terrible.
I was exhausted.
I wasn't sleeping properly.
I had responsibilities waiting for me every day, regardless of how little rest I'd gotten the night before.
And I was living with sounds that seemed to follow me everywhere.
There are only so many nights a person can spend lying awake, waiting for another cough, before exhaustion begins affecting how they respond to the world.
At least, that was my experience.
And eventually, I reached a point I'm not particularly proud of.
The Three-in-the-Morning Breaking Point
There were nights when my father's coughing and throat clearing would keep me awake for hours.
I'd lie there listening, trying to tolerate it, waiting for him to settle down.
But sometimes he didn't.
And sometimes, after hours of exhaustion and mounting frustration, I'd finally lose my temper.
At three in the morning, I'd find myself yelling at him to shut the fuck up.
Yes, I said it.
And I'm not going to pretend otherwise just because it doesn't make me sound particularly patient or saintly.
I'm pretty sure half the building could hear me.
Imagine being sound-sensitive and becoming so overwhelmed by noise that you end up making enough noise to wake the neighbors.
The irony wasn't lost on me.
But neither was the exhaustion.
I knew my father wasn't deliberately trying to keep me awake. I knew he had health problems. I knew yelling wasn't going to cure whatever was causing him to cough or clear his throat.
And yet, in those moments, all I wanted was for the sound to stop.
Just stop.
For five minutes.
Ten minutes.
Long enough for me to fall asleep.
I wasn't thinking about psychology or healthy communication techniques at three in the morning.
I was thinking about how desperately tired I was.
And how badly I needed quiet.
Loving Someone Doesn't Give You Unlimited Patience
There's something uncomfortable about admitting that you sometimes lost your temper with an elderly, sick parent.
People have certain expectations about caregiving.
You're supposed to be patient, understanding, compassionate, and endlessly available.
You're supposed to recognize that the person you're caring for can't help being ill.
And of course, you should recognize that.
But what happens when you understand all of those things and you're still completely overwhelmed?
What happens when you're caring for people whose needs never seem to end, while your own health and emotional well-being are deteriorating?
What happens when the person everyone depends on is the person who's barely holding everything together?
I don't think those questions receive enough attention.
Caregiving can involve love, responsibility, resentment, exhaustion, guilt, and frustration, sometimes all within the same hour.
You can genuinely want someone to be comfortable and well cared for while desperately wishing you could have a few hours when nobody needed anything from you.
You can understand that someone's illness causes unpleasant symptoms while finding those symptoms extremely difficult to live with.
And you can recognize that losing your temper wasn't helpful without pretending that the exhaustion leading up to it didn't exist.
I wish I'd handled some of those nights differently.
I wish I'd had more rest, more support, and more opportunities to step away before reaching my breaking point.
But I can't rewrite those moments.
I can only describe them as honestly as I remember them.
The Caregiver Nobody Really Saw
From the outside, a neighbor might hear someone yelling at an elderly parent in the middle of the night and draw an immediate conclusion.
What a terrible daughter.
How disrespectful.
How could anyone speak that way to their sick father?
But what they don't see is everything that happened before that moment.
They don't see the years of caregiving.
They don't see the household responsibilities, the medical needs, the financial pressures, or the countless ordinary tasks that somehow become one person's responsibility.
They don't see the nights without sleep.
They don't see the frustration of trying to help everyone else while your own needs continually move to the bottom of the list.
And they certainly don't see what it's like to become so sensitive to particular sounds that even anticipating the next noise keeps you awake.
They hear the yelling.
That's all.
And sometimes, that's enough for them to decide they understand the entire family.
Which brings me to something that happened with our upstairs neighbor.
Apparently, My Sleepless Nights Were Everybody's Business
After my father died, our upstairs neighbor, who has a habit of playing the television loudly at night, made a comment that left me absolutely stunned.
The neighbor indicated that the nighttime television noise was a way of getting back at me for having "reprimanded" my parents.
Reprimanded.
That was the word.
As though I'd been standing over my parents with a schoolteacher's ruler, correcting their table manners.
Never mind the years I'd spent caring for them.
Never mind the exhaustion, the interrupted sleep, or the fact that my father had been seriously ill.
Apparently, the occasional yelling was all that mattered.
Now, I can't independently verify every motive behind another person's behavior. I can only tell you what the neighbor said and how I understood it.
But the suggestion that someone would deliberately disturb my sleep because they disapproved of how I sometimes reacted under the strain of caregiving was astonishing.
I wasn't expecting sympathy from this particular neighbor.
But I also wasn't expecting a self-appointed moral authority on how I should have handled caring for my own parents.
It's remarkable how confident people can become about situations they've never had to experience themselves.
Especially when they only witnessed the moments you wish hadn't happened.
What Happens When the Caregiver Needs Care?
Looking back, I think one of the most difficult aspects of those years was that there never seemed to be much room for my own needs.
My parents were elderly and ill.
My sister needed help with various aspects of everyday life.
The household had to keep functioning.
And I was the person expected to manage so much of it.
My own exhaustion didn't make the responsibilities disappear.
Neither did my sound sensitivity.
Neither did perimenopause.
Whether I'd slept eight hours or barely slept at all, the next morning still arrived with another set of things that needed to be done.
It's easy to tell caregivers to take time for themselves.
But what does that mean when there isn't anyone else available to take over?
What does self-care look like when you don't have the money to hire help, the freedom to leave whenever you want, or a quiet place where nobody will interrupt you?
Sometimes advice that sounds perfectly reasonable on paper becomes almost laughable when applied to real life.
Take a relaxing bath.
Go for a walk.
Practice mindfulness.
Wonderful.
And who's going to handle everything while I'm enjoying my imaginary afternoon at the spa?
I don't mean that caregivers shouldn't try to find moments of rest. Those moments are important.
But we should acknowledge that finding them can be incredibly difficult when family responsibilities, health problems, and financial limitations leave very little flexibility.
Sometimes the caregiver doesn't need another suggestion about positive thinking.
Sometimes she needs someone else to take responsibility for something.
Anything.
Just once.
The Difference Between Understanding and Enduring
One of the central ideas behind Talkaholism.org is that understanding someone's behavior doesn't necessarily make living with that behavior easier.
My father's repetitive sounds are a perfect example.
I knew he wasn't deliberately making them to upset me.
I understood that he had medical problems.
I recognized that he couldn't necessarily control every cough, snort, or throat-clearing sound.
But my understanding didn't somehow switch off my reaction.
It didn't make the sounds less noticeable.
And it certainly didn't give me the ability to fall asleep while my attention remained focused on when the next one would happen.
That's something I've continued experiencing with my mother.
Her constant whispering and repetitive mouth noises provoke similar reactions in me today.
The sounds are different, but the overwhelming sensitivity feels familiar.
And just as I understood that my father's sounds weren't intentional, I recognize that my mother may not always be consciously aware of the noises she's making.
But there's still a difference between understanding a behavior and having the capacity to tolerate it indefinitely.
I think that's especially important for people who've spent years caring for family members.
Compassion is valuable.
Understanding is valuable.
But neither should require someone to pretend they're unaffected by the circumstances they're living in.
The Complicated Feelings That Remain After Someone Dies
After my father died, the household changed.
Of course it did.
The person who'd been part of my everyday life for so many years was no longer there.
And with him went the familiar sounds I'd spent countless nights desperately wishing would stop.
That's a strange thing to think about.
When someone is alive, you can become so overwhelmed by their habits that you can't imagine enduring them another day.
Then one day, they're gone.
And the sounds stop.
Permanently.
I don't think that automatically makes the years of frustration disappear. Nor does it mean that every difficult memory suddenly becomes a happy one.
My relationship with my father was complicated, and caregiving was only one part of our history.
But his death left me thinking about how many different emotions can exist within the same relationship.
Love doesn't erase resentment.
Grief doesn't erase exhaustion.
And regretting the way you reacted during a difficult moment doesn't mean the circumstances that overwhelmed you weren't real.
I can look back and recognize that yelling at my father wasn't the response I wish I'd been able to give.
I can also recognize that I was struggling under responsibilities and conditions that had become extremely difficult for me to manage.
Both things are true.
And I think allowing both to be true is more useful than rewriting the past to make myself look better or worse than I actually was.
Why I Want to Tell This Story
I could've left this story at the ambulance driver's wonderfully diplomatic description of my father.
"Very... interesting."
It's funny, memorable, and probably the most polite way anyone has ever described a man who could talk endlessly.
But the story doesn't end there.
Behind that little moment of humor were years of caregiving, excessive talking, repetitive illness-related sounds, sleepless nights, and a daughter who was running out of energy long before she ran out of responsibilities.
And I suspect there are other people who've experienced something similar.
People who love their elderly parents but sometimes dread hearing another question.
People who know their family members can't help certain behaviors but still find those behaviors difficult to tolerate.
People who lie awake anticipating the next cough, call for assistance, or nighttime interruption.
People who occasionally lose their patience and then feel terrible about it afterward.
And people who are judged for their worst moments by others who never witnessed the years of work surrounding them.
I don't think these experiences should be hidden simply because they're uncomfortable to admit.
Caregiving isn't always beautiful.
Sometimes it's messy, frustrating, exhausting, and filled with emotions we'd rather not acknowledge.
That doesn't mean caregivers are entitled to mistreat the people who depend on them.
It means caregivers are human beings whose limits and needs deserve attention before exhaustion pushes them beyond what they can manage.
Remembering the Man Behind the Noise
When I think about that ambulance driver now, I still laugh.
I can picture his expression, the hesitation, and the almost heroic effort he made to find a compliment.
I wonder how much my father managed to tell him during that one ambulance ride.
Probably enough to write a book.
And I wonder whether that man had any idea how funny I found the whole exchange, precisely because I knew my father so well.
There was a person behind all that talking.
A man with his own history, personality, opinions, habits, and health problems.
A man whose life was much bigger than the noises that sometimes made mine so difficult.
And there was also a daughter behind those occasional three-in-the-morning outbursts.
A daughter trying to care for elderly parents, manage a household, support her sister, deal with her own changing health, and somehow find enough quiet to get a few hours of sleep.
Neither of us was simply the worst moment someone else might have witnessed.
I wish more people understood that.
Because when you're caring for someone, the world often sees the person receiving care and overlooks the person providing it.
Until that person finally loses her patience.
Then everybody notices.
I don't have a perfect ending to this story. I can't go back and make those sleepless nights easier or undo the moments when I yelled out of frustration.
But I can acknowledge what those years taught me.
You can understand that someone isn't deliberately causing you distress and still be overwhelmed by the effect their behavior has on you.
You can care deeply for someone and need relief from caring for them.
And you can wish you'd handled certain moments differently without pretending you had unlimited patience, energy, or emotional resources.
As for my father, I hope that ambulance driver eventually recovered from their little road trip together.
And wherever Dad is now, I hope he's finally getting some peace and quiet.
Although knowing my father, there's probably someone nearby listening to a very long story.
And searching desperately for a polite way to call him...
Very interesting. 😂
