Sunglasses at Night

...Cause my monitor is too bright.

I was driving home a few days ago with a moderate headache, smelling phantom BO like the world was coated in it. The sun was low and intense in the sky. The highway runs along some large buildings which cast long, narrow shadows across the lanes. The effect was of a strobe light, the setting sun blinking on and off from behind the silhouetted apartment homes. I don't know if it was the blinking or the brightness of the sun but I had a sudden urge to swerve my car into the median. I wasn't suicidal, I didn't want to die exactly, I just wanted the nauseating, piercing, brain jangling pain to STOP. I resisted the urge to crash into painlessness and said nothing aloud. But when I exited the freeway, the sun was reflecting off of the many downtown "skyscrapers". Normally this is really gorgeous, the buildings turn gold with the backdrop of bright blue sky fading to pink and dark purple. Today, it was torture. The reflection hit my eyes and I clamped a hand over my mouth and started to sob, feeling barely in control of the car. I can't explain the feeling. It didn't just hurt. It was like I was a PC overloaded by a virus. I locked up and focused on not crashing. The boyfriend was extremely tense in the passenger seat, and as soon as we got to a place we could stop, he had me switch seats with him. Then I started getting carsick. It was almost funny.

We made it home with no collisions or vomiting.

Noise has become a big problem for me, too.

I wear earplugs so much that I sometimes have to intentionally not use them because my ears get raw. The television has to be so low that we usually can't really hear it. Subtitles are standard. A barking dog, and screaming child, or a just-too-loud voice at the wrong time and my entire head vibrates like a cartoon character with his head inside a bell, an unwitting victim of a gonging.

Head pain, phonophobia and photophobia are my biggest problems in life. Forget bills, politics and the threat of a global epidemic, as long as everyone is very quiet and I keep my sunglasses on, we should be ok.