Senses on Strike

This week, I have had a small taste, an inkling, of what it must be like to grow old; to have my wits and faculties desert me while my body grows weaker by the day.

I have experienced first-hand the ambivalence of silence. While it is comfortably quiet living inside a soundproofed cocoon where only the most strident of noises penetrates, the flipside is the frustration of having to ask people to repeat what they’ve just said.

This nasty cold that is doing the rounds is a true leveler. Everyone I have spoken to has felt absolutely wiped out afterward and I am no exception. It is a struggle to hear above the auditory hallucinations that my body taunts me with and 4 days after taking the requisite antibiotics, I am still feeling dull, dizzy and downright disorientated.

I hope that, when I next become frustrated by an older person’s growing deafness, I remember what it felt like to have one’s body refuse to function as it should.