So I don’t know if I’m becoming more sensorily sensitive in general or if I’m just in a period of low-level but ever-present cognitive roiling which thins my psychic skin, but lately I am having intense difficulty with neighborhood noises and sounds. It doesn’t matter if it’s sidewalk-breaking construction noise or the sounds of the neighbor who listens to his loud television through his open door while he sits outside and hacks up a lung over a cigarette. I can feel my body physically tensing against them as if readying for a bodily blow from a physical force.