Does anyone else's brain play phantom crying on loop or is it just me
Is there a way to uninstall the phantom crying software from my brain or am i just stuck like this forever. I was in the shower today for the first time in like forty eight hours because life has been a literal blender lately. Both kids were finally down for a nap and the wife was out grabbing groceries. Total silence right. Wrong. As soon as the water hit the floor i heard it. That high pitched screech that makes your heart stop and your stomach drop into your shoes. I shut the water off and stood there shivering like an idiot for two minuites listening. Silence. Not even a peep.
This happens every single time i try to do something for myself. I put my headphones on to play ten minutes of a game and suddenly i am convinced the toddler has fallen out of bed or the baby is somehow choking on a stray lego. I pull one ear cup off and hold my breath like a tactical operator. Nothing but the sound of the fridge humming. It is like my brain has been rewired to find the frequency of a baby screaming in every white noise source available. The fan? Sounds like a cry. The wind outside? Definitely a cry. The sound of my own blood pumping in my ears? You guessed it.
I even caught myself doing it when the kids were at my parents house for the weekend. I was sitting on the couch with a beer and i actually muted the TV because i thought i heard a whimper from the nursery. The nursery was empty. I was forty miles away from my children and i was still haunted by ghost noises. It is honestly exhausting. You spend all day wanting five minutes of peace and then when you get it your own biology decides to play a prank on you. My nervous system is basically a fried circuit board at this point.
The worst part is that when they actually do cry my brain sometimes lags because it is so used to the false alarms. I am out here living in a constant state of low level fight or flight and i dont think i have forgotten what real silence feels like. It is always just a prelude to the next imagined disaster. I am currently sitting in the dark with the baby monitor two inches from my face even though the thing is on full volume and the green lights arent even blinking. I am probably going to go check on them for the fourth time in an hour just to be sure.