i am neurotic.

I cannot sleep with total silence, my noise creator of choice: a small fan.

If my roommate comes in and I’m playing a video game, I turn down the volume drastically and close the door to the computer room. Not that he’s ever indicated that he’s bothered by it; I just get extremely embarrassed if I think he’s hearing mutants yelling or elves commanding me to remember the Sunwell.

I utterly cannot stand the sound of someone filing their nails. Sounds of similar friction have the same effect, but specifically nail filing for me is like kryptonite for Superman. When I hear it, I seem to lose all energy, my hands tense up, I get weak in the knees, shudder, and even get a little nauseous. These effects would be exponentially greater if my nails were actually be filed. If this were used on me as a means for interrogation, I’d probably sing like a canary. This is also why I let my nails grow longer than I should.

I loathe the sound of liquid poured in a glass of ice! If pretentious was a sound, this would be it.

I cannot stand silence. It freaks me out to be in a quiet classroom, or in quiet meetings, and I especially cannot sleep in silence. It gets to the point where I start getting ridiculously fidget-y and sick to my stomach. It makes test days really, really bad.

Every time I eat Tic Tac mints..as soon as I put them in my mouth I have to click them around on my teeth to make that “clack clack” noise and then I pretend that I got my teeth knocked out and they are rattling around in there. I can’t not do it – but only with tic tacs.

Every time i go to the bathroom i have to leave the faucet on until im finished because i’m afraid that people will hear me pee.

I can’t dry my hair in an open room. Even in my tiny bathroom, I have to shut the door and have my back pressed against it because I’m afraid someone will sneak up on me and I won’t be able to hear them over the noise. If I don’t take my “precautions,” I start felling panicky and get a tingly feeling on the back of my neck.

I love S’mores. My favorite part is when you put the top graham cracker on top of the chocolate and toasted marshmallow. I love the sound of the marshmallow being crunched down by the graham cracker. If I don’t like the sound or there is no sound, I have to throw away the S’more and make a new one.

when i get a call on my phone, before i answer it, i rehearse the first line of what i’ll say to them. like, “hey dude what’s up, ” to make sure it has the appropriate affect and cadence.