Emotional Support Sisters

I’m going to jump on the bandwagon and write a post about the sensory issues I have faced. Of all my sisters, I probably have had the least difficulty with sensory issues. Wahoo. What a competition to win. That is if we compared pain. Which we don’t. Just say no. Pain is not a competition.

My biggest sensory issue has to do with socks. My poor mother. I would take my shoes and socks off if the seam on the toe of the sock was the least bit wonky. Ideally, there would be no seam. Like many ideals, this was not an option. The seam had to lay flat and straight across my toes. I could not tolerate bunching, anywhere. I especially couldn’t handle any bunching of the toe seam. I had small feet and often wore hand-me-down socks. This is a recipe for fabric bunching up within your shoes. The solution was to very carefully pull the sock on so the seam was aligned correctly. Then I made sure to pull the sock tight (or that my mom pulled the sock tight). Even if that meant the curved heel of the sock was now the curved blob over the Achilles tendon.

The bad news is that I never grew out of it. The entire previous paragraph could be written in the present tense as well as the past tense. Except for the parts about my mother helping me put my socks on. That’s the good news. While I never grew out of it, I did develop the ability to deal with it by myself. To this day, if I put my shoe on and realize that the sock isn’t quite right, I will take my shoe and sock off and start again. Buying my own socks that are the correct size and not hand-me-downs improves the odds that I can manage on the first try, though.

As a child and teenager, that was the only sensory issue I had: socks. That is no longer the case. 

In my early 20s, I developed a case of shingles. Yeah, the old people disease. You’d be surprised how many young people get it too. Here’s a quick, and probably unnecessary, anatomy and pathology lesson. The chickenpox virus can stay in your nervous system even after you no longer have chickenpox. The virus likes to hang out in this nifty little thing called the dorsal root ganglia. It’s a little bundle of sensory neurons (sensory neurons are the ones that tell your brain that you are feeling something) just outside of your spinal cord. You have a left and right dorsal root ganglion basically between each of your vertebrae.  Shingles are when the virus decides to rear its ugly little head again because it’s a meanie-poopoo-head. It causes a painful rash along the nerve of whatever dorsal root ganglion it emerged from. That leads to these painful rashes following this thing called a dermatome. Dermatomes are these stripey lines showing which spinal nerve goes to which part of the body. When I got shingles, based on this dermatome map, it was probably along T5. 

Now, I never truly got along with the torture device which is the bra. My mom told me I had to wear one, so I did. Look at where the T5 band is. I gave this little anatomy lesson so you could see how having shingles would’ve made that relationship even more fraught. The shingles have long since cleared up. The damage to that relationship has not recovered.

I remember in junior high and high school hearing people talk about changing out of their jeans when they got home from school. I thought that sounded like a lot of extra work. Jeans are perfectly comfortable to wear until it’s time to put on pajamas. Changing into some other pair of pants is just a hassle. That remained the case until I experienced a 2-2.5 year-long major depressive episode in which the accompanying anxiety made wearing less-than-comfortable clothing untenable. I wore jeans or whatever other pants I needed to while I was out of the house, but as soon as I was home again I changed out of jeans into sweatpants or men’s basketball shorts (because women’s basketball shorts are way too short and tight to be comfortable). As with shingles, this major depressive episode eventually cleared. The issues with restrictive pants have not. And let’s face it, COVID work-from-home didn’t help the situation either. Professional on top, comfy on the bottom.

My tale is not particularly hope-filled, since I have not grown out of any sensory issues but have definitely grown into a few. It can happen. As I mentioned before, though, I win the “Least Troubled By Sensory Issues” trophy in the sibling rivalry. My sensory issues have not greatly impacted my quality of life or ability to function. I would not be diagnosed with a sensory processing disorder. So why even write a post about it (besides jumping in the bandwagon)? Mostly because every post I write ends up being a therapeutic journey for me. This whole blog started as a way to help others, but has quickly morphed into forcing me to articulate my experiences in a way that has been quite helpful to me. Nevertheless, I do have a purpose beyond self-help. I want to provide another perspective for others on their own self-help journey. Maybe you also hate socks and just needed to know that you aren’t alone. Maybe your child hates socks and you are ready to let them wear sandals during winter just so you can avoid the sock fight. Maybe you can’t relate at all to what I’ve said but you have a painful rash that follows a dermatome and you have now decided to go to the doctor for it. Maybe you didn’t even finish reading this post and so my wrap-up is completely lost on you. Maybe, just maybe, I don’t actually know how to write an ending paragraph to this post and I’m stalling.

TL;DR—

I don’t like socks. Never have. Never will. But it’s not because of the socks, it’s because of what my brain tells me about the socks.