Context
So those who are “close” to me probably already know that I’m two and a half months into being sort of half-deaf in one ear.
I’ll just skip straight to the point.
I can’t stand it anymore.
I can’t stand how everything sounds different. I can’t stand listening to my own library of music I’ve handpicked and collected over the past ~6 years. I can’t stand listening to my own family speak. I can’t even manage to watch Fubuki or Towa for more than 3 minutes at a time without getting irritated by how different their voices sound to me.
The worst part? I don’t know what to do.
I’ve been to 5 ENTs, and nothing they’ve done has changed anything. One even tried to blame me for listening to loud music. Me. The person who lectures everyone and their mother about the 85 dB limit and gets triggered by anything I deem too loud.
Actually, I don’t know what’s worse, the guy who tried to blame me for wearing headphones or the guy who told me I had tinnitus (which I’ve had for the last 9+ years), refused to listen to anything I said, and went “Do you want to be cured or not?” while straight up ordering me to try to imitate my 15 kHz tinnitus. What, I look like a fucking speaker to you?
Maybe if this whole thing wasn’t happening to me it’d be funnier. If this happened to literally anyone else, I’d probably be laughing my ass off about it in secret. Yes, I’m a terrible person.
My symptoms match those of a tumor that goes around and fuck people’s inner ears up. They said it’s rare; I’m probably suffering from something else; There’s a very low chance of me suffering from it. Knowing me, I probably have it. Why don’t they give me this RNG hit rate whenever I’m pulling in gachas? Texas came home real fucking late in the game.
Fortunately, (or maybe unfortunately), it doesn’t kill people. That is, unless they’re really unlucky. See above, but watch your sides so they don’t go into orbit.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand.
Coping is hard
I’m this close to just quitting listening to music cold turkey. I’m just tired of coping. I’ve tried many, many, many copium methods. I tried channel-separated EQs, cranking up the frequencies that sound like crap on my funny ear. I tried my Samsung phone’s Adapt Sound feature. I tried shifting my channel balance towards the funny side. I tried fucking with the Valsava maneuver to undeafen my funny ear. I tried doing the inverse. At this point being half-deaf in both ears would probably trigger my brain less.
None of them made music sound normal. As per usual, life is suffering. Lounging around on my bed with IEMs in my ear and my playlist on loop was my #1 stress relief method. I can’t even de-stress anymore.
The only thing making all this worse is that some people turn into mental health and biology experts after hearing about my brand new thing™. I get people telling me it’s all in my head and I just need to stop being stressed. Funny. I also get people who suddenly show up and lecture me about hearing health with science they pulled out of their ass. The same people also play random ass music at 11 pm at, I don’t fucking know, 100 dB or some shit. The irony. Again, probably would be funnier if this wasn’t happening to me.
It’s also pure irony how Yorushika did an entire album about quitting music because the character writing the music in the story can’t cope after a close friend or girlfriend or wife or partner or whatever left or died or something of the sort. That album was lit by the way. It was so lit it was the first (and probably will be last) album I bought physically. Again, notice the irony present.
The titular track had the dude go through all 5 stages of grief in exactly 4 minutes and 2 seconds before he went and offed himself. At least, in my interpretation of it anyway. The dude kept remembering the dudette whenever he tried playing music. He then quit and still remembered their time together anyway whenever he sees people just be happy in general. I feel like the last 2 verses of the lyrics were just him screaming at the world after deciding that yes, he was going to kill himself. He’s just like me fr fr.
Try listening to the entire album before your hearing goes to shit like mine. You have to try to interpret their entire 2 mini-albums released before and the follow up album released after to get the full enjoyment, though. Listening to the music alone doesn’t do the album justice. IMO the entire saga is a really unique experience. Disclaimer: I don’t know music theory or even play any instrument or anything.
If you manage to contact me somehow, I’ll even lend you my audio gear along with the physical album if you want, I don’t have much use for them anymore anyway.
At any rate, I’m seriously thinking about quitting listening altogether. It’s just not enjoyable anymore. My \$300 IEMs sound like shit now. My two \$200 headphones might as well be tin cans. My hundreds of GBs of FLAC files sound like crap. That’s at least \$700 down the drain. I’m moving to Japan for grad school next year. Help.
Humor aside, I had ~6 years to enjoy that \$700 to its fullest. If you’re still dailying the free earbuds that came with your phone, try upgrading your stuff. It’s 100% worth it. Use that money you’ve got saved up for a second custom keyboard. You can sucker punch my face in if you ever feel any tinge of regret after following this advice.
I’m going off topic again. Anyhow, I’ll probably quit listening to music forever and you’ll probably notice. Massive props to Amane Kanata, who has pretty much the exact same condition I do and keeps on making bangers. She’s an inspiration, albeit one I can’t follow. My mentality is weak sauce in comparison. She’s not like me fr fr.
Moving on
People at work have probably noticed that my productivity has completely tanked the last 2 months. If any of you are somehow reading this, this is why.
I read this one guy’s experience on Reddit. He pretty much got fucked by the same thing, but for him, it was more of a productivity boost. After all, if you don’t have any hobbies to procrastinate for, why procrastinate at all? He said that it’s not mentally healthy and he just feels miserable and tired 24/7 now, and I don’t plan on following in his footsteps.
That means finding a new hobby. I still don’t know what hobby I’ll find to replace music. Video games don’t scratch that itch anymore. I’m shit at FPS now and I dislike the experience of getting absolutely fucking destroyed by zoomers online. I don’t have enough energy to grind gacha games non-stop. Not to mention that rhythm games are out entirely because I can’t hear shit. Something something だから僕は音楽を辞めた。Perhaps a new genre would help.
I’ve got a few activities to try on my bucket list. First is getting back into competitive programming. I’m going to try a couple of CF and AtCoder rounds to see if it scratches that itch. It’s nigh time to get back to CP anyway, what with grad school entrance getting closer. They have a club over there and I feel like joining them would be fun if my language barrier doesn’t fuck everything up.
Speaking of language barriers, that’s also on my bucket list. I feel like reading fiction in Japanese would be fun. I used to read hundreds of thousands of words a week back in middle school for shits and giggles. Yes, I know, fucking nerd. Learned English that way, though, so maybe I could strengthen my weeb speak the same way. I’ve got the easy stuff down and kanji aren’t a problem for me. Maybe it’ll be fun. Maybe it’ll be so hard I’ll actually consider coping harder to listen to music. That seems like a good ending. A good ending. Hmm.
Maybe visual novels would be good too. I could just turn off the music, or if they don’t use the frequencies my brain gets angry at, just let them be. Some illustration and voice to go along with the wall of text would be nice. This is not an excuse to download eroge. I don’t jerk off using my laptop on principle.
Last thing on my bucket list is food. I’ve been coping hard with food the past two months. In fact, I’ve been food-coping so much I’m now up to 69 kg from 62 kg back in October. Nice. I’ve also recently been introduced to the wonderful (and expensive) world of actually good tea by some friends. The first thing I’m gonna do after landing in Japan next year is look for good food and tea. I have no idea how I’ll afford this, but I’m sure as hell gonna try.
Anywho, I feel like I’ve ranted enough and the insides of my brain aren’t as toxic as before I got this out into writing. Turns out writing stuff out instead of bottling them in can be liberating, whodda thunk.
Apologies in advance for the first entry of this blog being depressing as shit.