Let me preface this by saying that if you aren't interested in reading my aimless ramblings about my many, many psychoses, I understand completely and suggest you skip down past this wall of text and get to the hilarious drawings I have provided for you. I also want to point out that what is to follow contains one of the most annoying things on the internet: self-diagnosis of a psychological problem. What I'm about to talk about isn't something that a medical professional has told me, and I have nothing even resembling medical training. You would be completely justified in lumping my opinion in with Jenny "well of course vaccines cause autism!" McCarthy and dismissing it as hard as you can.
For most of my life, I've been a walking trainwreck of anxiety. There was always something of it there, but it really started to get out of hand when I was about nine years old. I've always had difficulty in large crowds, but something changed and an extra-thick layer of difficulty got added to my day to day issues. I'll go into the events that triggered the change in a moment, but first let me tell you that I recently learned there is a name for the problem I have.
Misophonia.
Quite literally, "hatred of sound". An intense, unreasonable emotional reaction to specific sounds. I even recognize that the feelings I get are unreasonable. The logical part of my brain tells me that I shouldn't feel the way I do at the time, but try getting the rest of my brain to cooperate. Honestly, up until I saw that this wasn't just me being an unreasonable asshole, and that there are other people going through the same thing, I was angry at myself. I never understood why I couldn't just calm down, like people kept telling me to do whenever I brought it up. I don't know how many grown men you've seen weep, but for about an hour after discovering I wasn't the only one, I don't even know how to describe how I felt. I mean, people aren't usually happy to realize they may have a psychological disorder, but I'll take that over just being a petty asshole any day.
I still have extremely vivid memories of how it all started. I was in grade 4. A classmate sitting to my immediate left, let's call him "Bauhaus", developed a wet, repetitive snort. When I say snort, I mean *SSKKKNNNNNNRRRRRRRRX*. When I say repetitive, I literally mean 3 or 4 times per minute. After a few weeks it really started to wear on me. I confronted him. "Bauhaus", I said, "could you try to cut back on the snort?" He got defensive. "I can't, if I don't it's going to drip out all over my desk." "Well then, could you blow your nose?" "That won't work, it's packed too tight." It was at this moment that I first started having the thoughts. The thoughts are expressions of rage in my head, and they get really fucking raw. "Moron," I thought. "You can't have it both fucking ways, either it's so loose it's about to drip out, or it's so tightly packed that it's not an issue. Learn to use a fucking tissue you stupid asshole."
The snorting continued throughout the school year. Sometimes the anger would build up enough that I would start crying. Any time I tried to talk about it I got dismissed. The combination of the feelings the sound made me have coupled with nobody taking me seriously was horrible. When the school year finally ended, I had never been so relieved in my life. How terrible, then, that when I returned after the summer to start grade 5, I immediately noticed several of my new classmates were in the business of sniffling with a similar frequency. The same anger, the same dismissal, and the beginning of the rest of my life. Over the course of the next few years, there was one lesson I learned over and over again; emotional honesty causes more problems than it solves. I know that it's unhealthy to hold emotions in, and everyone talks a big game about letting them out, but every time I tried to tell someone it resulted in a)getting screamed at b)being told to stop being such a baby or c)the person thinking it would be really funny to make the noise even more to "annoy" me. Let me tell you something; I would fucking kill for it to just be annoying. If it was just annoying, I could deal with it. It's enraging. Not just enraging, but "I'M GOING TO BITE YOUR FUCKING NOSE OFF AND SPIT IT BACK IN YOUR IDIOT FACE" enraging. Which brings me to my next link.
The Activation Scale - When I first read about what misophonia was, I was at least a little skeptical that it applied to me. That went away to instant I saw this scale. I have been all the way up to level 9. I've never been to 10 because as much as I get enraged, I don't think I have it in me to hurt people that way my brain is screaming at me to. I want you to understand, I'm not saying this in a "ha ha man I get mad at stuff lol" kind of way. I'm saying the urge that fills my body is "CAVE THIS FUCKING IDIOTS FACE IN WITH A CLAW HAMMER". I'm being completely serious in saying I've had to leave rooms or take other measure to keep myself from exploding in a screaming fit at people. As a kid it was common for me to scream into a pillow, cry, or just hit inanimate objects, because the pain distracted me for a while. High school was terrible. My ability to focus got worse and worse, and by the end of grade 12 my marks had dropped noticeably. And then, the horror that was university. Imagine going from 30 people around you driving you crazy, to a lecture hall of 200 people, none of them having the faintest idea of how a kleenex works. While I have much more of a handle on it these days, I still hit level 9 maybe once or twice a year. For instance, one time riding the bus (nightmare), a woman in front of me had a dry, repetitive sniffle. "Ok, no problem" I thought. "Just put the old headphones on and-" The headphones had broken moments earlier. Panic set in immediately. I must have looked like a complete weirdo, because my ultimate solution was to put my fingers in my ears and hum. This is because my brain was telling me to grab her fucking ponytail and yank so that her head would wang off of the metal bar.
I don't like feeling like this. I don't even like the idea of hurting people, especially for things they don't even know are tremendously enraging. So imagine how things went when I found out that getting intoxicated really, REALLY helped me deal with it. I live in Nova Scotia, so it doesn't seem all that out of the ordinary if you're drunk all the time, or high all the time, or doing whatever other thing people in economically depressed regions do to get through the work week. These old bones can't handle that kind of inebriation anymore. I am really lucky, however. I managed to land a job that allows me to wear headphones and listen to music. That's an averted disaster, because there's a guy at work who routinely makes a noise that sounds like he's drowning in sandpaper.
Even as I'm typing this I'm trying to psyche myself out of posting it. Like I said, the main lesson I've taken from this situation throughout my life has been "don't tell anyone about it". I imagine it can be frustrating for people around me because trying to get a gauge of how I really feel about something/someone is like pulling fucking teeth. It's gotten to the point where I'm not even trying to keep it in anymore, it just won't come out. No words solidify in my head, my mouth won't open, and I stand there pissing off whoever is trying to ask me a genuine question. Every day requires that I brace myself mentally and take a lot of steps to distance myself from it as much as I possibly can.
At the very least, I've developed some super powers from this. I've listened to so much music that I have the amazing ability to snidely mock those with less developed taste. "Oh, you're into (band)? Heh, that's cute." Small instances of dickery keep me sane and make me look cool. Try it, it's fun!
Ok, so that wasn't very funny. Now on to the joviality.
I still haven't quite landed on a consistent style. I do think it's getting closer though. I'm starting to get to the point where I can visualize something and then try to draw it. Up until a few months ago I couldn't do that in any meaningful way. It's still not turning out 100 percent the way I imagine it to, but it's getting less horrible every time.
This piece is titled "Nick Woods: Self-portrait, August 29, 2026"
This piece is called "Nick Woods: self portrait, May 15 2002 GODDAMIT I FORGOT TO FINISH THE HAND AGAIN"
This is the best muscle lady I've ever drawn. She is named MuscleChick Humperdink. Have you noticed that aside from 90% of the visible hands in this update not being finished, they're all strategically placed in such as way that for the most part, you can't see any feet? I know it seems like a cop out, or that I'm trying to avoid challenging myself, but it's literally just a accident of framing. You can believe me or not, but here's how I feel about it.
Yeah boi.
