Miso(phonic) Soup

“You don’t want the soup?” The waitress is very nice, but she acts like I’m the first person to ever decline soup. I despise soup, partly because it’s lazy and doesn’t need to be a thing in most restaurants anymore, mostly because of the cacophony it creates. Just thinking about it sets my brain on fire.

How the fuck doesn’t she hear that? It’s happening in her own goddamn head. Is it hollow? It sounds like her head is hollow. Does she have a second, louder mouth where her brain should be? What the fuck? Is your uvula somehow involved in all this? How can someone possibly make that much sound eating a goddamn slice of pizza. Babe, I love you, and I’m trying to develop Stockholm Syndrome for your eating noises, but it’s taking time and I need you to meet me halfway here.

I suffer from misophonia, also known as selective sound sensitivity syndrome. It’s a sensitivity to certain sounds and there is no logic behind why or how it affects people. For me, this means that if someone nearby is eating, I can hear how many teeth they are using and exactly how moist their mouth is, and it damn near sends me into a blind rage.

What the actual fuck, Ma. How the fuck hard is it to keep your mouth shut when you chew? NO-WHAT-NO You did NOT just genuinely GULP ginger ale and then “tst…ahhhhh” after. I will punch you in the throat if you ever do that again. I swear if you reach for the hummus with chickpeas, I’m gonna throw the dog at you, you gum slappin’ bitch.

When I say that I suffer from misophonia, I mean it. It damages all of my social and familial relationships and I don’t want to be this way. I don’t understand why I am like this, but I can’t help noticing the sounds that everyone makes when they eat. I understand when there are certain foods, like spaghetti or cereal, that are just noisy foods. That in itself doesn’t bother me. It’s when the food doesn’t match the sound being made or necessitate the sounds. I don’t mind people moaning a little over good food to show some appreciation. It’s the sounds of them actually eating.

Lips smacking. Gums slapping. Chickpeas somehow snapping like chewing gum in a middle school geography class. Cantookles cantooking and flarplehorns flaring. All the noise, noise, noise, noise! I feel like the Grinch on Christmas when all the Whos down in Whoville moisten their palettes and nom their roast beast.

Dry toast shouldn’t sound wet, Allison. It should sound dry. How in the actual fuck are you managing to slurp it like a goddamn watermelon?! There isn’t even butter, jam, or jelly on it, so how, I ask you, how are you making that sound?!? Are you spewing up little bits of acid to help digest it like a bug? And what is that *haahwmp* sound before you bite into it—slurp into it? It’s too cartoonish to be real. Am I alive or is this hell?

I had my hearing checked by a specialist and he thinks I have tinnitus. He couldn’t see anything but I did display hearing loss at the highest decibel they tested. There is a constant ringing, but I’m not convinced that it actually is tinnitus. I think I hear electricity in the air, like that sound when a TV screen is blank but you can hear that it’s on. At night I can hear every car in a two-block radius. But background noise doesn’t bother me. If anything, I encourage and embrace it. It’s chewing sounds that send me into a blind rage.

There are only two times that I will say something about someone’s chewing. The first is when I am trying to get some work done. That means concentrating, which for some reason focuses my hearing. If someone fucking slurps dry toast while I am working, I am tempted to squeeze their temples until my thumbs meet in the middle of their brain. The other time, which most people can relate to, is when someone is chewing gum like a cow chewing cud. That requires no explanation as to why it pisses people off—four to six wet teeth mashing and grinding a chemical blob—and sends me into a rant about how, in precise and measured steps, the cud-chewer can go fuck themselves.

Why is your mouth open? You’re eating cereal, Dad. Do you think the milk won’t drool out and back into the bowl? Are you aerating the cereal? Do you think you are Detective Boyle from Brooklyn 99? Besides, it’s almost 9:30 at night, what the fuck are you eating cereal for? Oh, you see me staring at you with my eyes wide open? Good. Guess what, I can’t close them. They’re being held open by pure hatred. Oh, here comes the trail mix that means you can’t possibly breathe through your nose so that you have to exhale the sounds into my ear! Shut your damn face-hole or I’m putting you in a home with the worst nurses I can find.

So, no, I would not like the Miso Soup that comes with my hibachi dinner special. While I don’t care much for the taste, I think you can understand why I despise soup and those who would dare consume it around me.

“I will take the salad though, thank you.”