Expreiencing more than music

Oh my God, It's got a name!

All my life I have experienced music in an unusual way. I tried to tell my mother, and later, a fellow piano student, but they just looked at me like I was crazy.
Soon I learned not to tell people, and at times I've hardly believed it myself.

But it's real, and it's called synaesthesia.

I see and feel music. It can get very intense. I experience the sounds, but it is so much more than that. Colors and shapes and textures, pounding and tingling and breath-stopping waves of sensations when the music is really good.

And there are other things, as well. There are things that happen with any vocalizations... including words. Oral speach is so hard for me to understand because I am so distracted by the way words look and feel. It's why I believe it's part of the reason I rarely use the phone. I get so much more from the sounds than just the words that are being said, and it's hard to determine which things I am intended to understand - which things the person is trying to convey.

I'm extremely excited. I had really given up on ever finding anyone who experienced music the way I do, but then, today, I got a clue from (of all things) watching an episode of "Heroes" with my kids. There was a new character on there tonight who could see music as shapes and colors. I caught my breath when this played out on my TV. I thought, could someone invent that who has never experienced it?

So I googled it. I found so many entries... and I found that it has a name. I'm not alone! Another secret - out there. I'm a synaesthete.

Revelation from a First CoDA Meeting

On August 22nd, 2008, I went to my first CoDA meeting. The next morning, I wrote this in my journal:

I didn’t sleep too well last night, but finally fell asleep around 1:00. I woke up at 5:30 with a phrase running through my head. A shrink would probably tell me it's mania  because it feels very profound and all-encompassing and it won't leave me alone. I don't know where it came from, but it feels like it was put in my head... here it is:

Give what you can but take what you need.

It's pretty simple but to me it says it all, at the moment. Maybe that's what CoDA is all about? 

My Journal from today:

I have that feeling again. It's one I never could identify until quite recently. I always was aware of the anxiety, the tension building, but in the past I never could figure out what it was about. Now, i know, from years of therapy, that it is about some part of me, some "child part", that needs something. I am running around the internet like the proverbial headless chicken, looking for somehting that will fix it, but I can't fix it that way. In fact it's making it worse.

I tell myself I don't have time to deal with this right now, but apparently I had an hour to sit here and do all kinds of things that were not helpful at all, including going into a couple sites and posts that I have told myself I would not go into because I have become obsessive about them and I know they are not helping me.

A couple days ago, I identified a problem going back to when I was seven that seems to relate to some of what I've been reacting to. I need to do something with it, find some time to try out what C suggested in an email two nights ago. For some reason, I am afraid to do that, and I don't know why. It's a simple enough exercise, but it involves some meditation, in a way, and I've noticed I've been avoiding that for quite some time. I'm not sure why I would be avoiding meditation, but there is something to that....

A lot of questions this morning.

I have a house full of people, today. We have a family wedding to go to tomorrow, so everyone is in town and several are staying here. I'm going to be making dinner for 16 later, and just got back in town last night, so I have groceries to buy and I still haven't figured out what I'm wearing tomorrow....

It's overwhelming and stressful, and having this other stuff sitting on top is not helping at all and I want to ask God, how can this be the right timing? Why is this happening now?