Ringing in My Ears

& other lies my anxiety tells me.

Tonight, everything in my house is conspiring to push me over the edge. I’ve got one daughter coughing (we’re all perpetually sick at this point), my other daughter (oh yeah, we’ll talk about that) crying, my sleeping husband sleep talking/grunting/coughing (again, we’re sick) and the goddamn Apple Watch dinging at random intervals because the charger is going bad.

I’m not sure if I woke Rick up or if he woke up to the baby, but next thing I know I’m snapping at him, complaining about all of the noises – on top of which, there is now a periodic high-pitched ringing. “That noise,” I say for the fourth time, frustrated that he can’t hear what is very clearly coming from some sort of broken electronics or, you know, something about to catch fire. Eventually I give up, chalking it up to tank-loading-induced hearing loss. He goes back to sleep, and I take a breath. I get the baby settled down and back to bed, peek in to make sure that E is still asleep, and get myself situated back on my pillow. Then, out of curiosity, I Google: “anxiety ringing in ears.” Yep, totally a thing. Sigh. Of course it is. I mentally add it to the list, take another deep breath, and put my podcast back on. I suppose I don’t have to worry about an impending fire from a malfunctioning computer. At least, not tonight.