This is an odd thing that I have only shared with a very small handful of people because it is so weird. I have often wondered if anyone else has had the same experiences, and after giving it some serious debate, have hesitantly decided to put it out there.  First off, I would like to make it quite clear that I am sane (really!), credible, not delusional.  Next, I would like to state that this could just be coincidence, but it is rather odd.  Despite the title of this post, I am not talking about pencils skittering across a table or fruit floating in the air.

To begin, it is no secret that when one sense begins to deteriorate, others often become heightened to take up the slack.  It is upon this premise which I base my thoughts on these experiences.  It has been an unfortunate situation that my hearing has been deteriorating for quite some time.  Because of this, intensely focusing on visuals in order to garner cues to what is going on around me has become a way of life, as it is for all people with the sense of sound diminished.  Of course, this heightened scrutiny brings on a different sort of awareness.  Body language, the most minute of facial expression, a general aura about a person  – all this reveals extra information that does not require hearing.

Colors evoke extra strong emotions.  The sense of smell has become so acute that I am sometimes floored by certain perfumes and scented products, where once upon a time they didn’t bother me.  Beyond being able to tell the obvious – who had garlic for dinner or drank beer the night before –  it is sometimes possible to detect the odor of a medication.  The scent of the world in nature has become more powerful than ever, giving the smallest hint of what it must be like to be an animal in the wild. But even more abstractly I have noted the ability to discern and react to someone’s discomfort or happiness, the smell of  fear and of joy.  It is barely perceptible and not always present, but something that has been experienced.

People who lose a sense often are able to pick up on energy.   After a few experiences, I have to wonder if a person can also emit some sort of energy field that can manifest itself in odd ways.

The experience of profound grief; the loss of a loved one, be it through death, divorce, a parting of ways; the diagnosis of a serious illness; hitting the bottom of addiction; the loss of a home or a livelihood, or of everything you ever owned; a catastrophic event;  circumstances beyond our control….. whatever those scenarios might be, they affect us deeply and leave us wide open and raw.  What I noticed was the most peculiar of phenomena when at my own most grievous, vulnerable, totally blown away moments.  There seems to be a disruptive, almost electrical charge that happens, some sort of positive/negative emission that possibly makes these things occur. Or at least it has seemed that way.

To start, my hearing aid batteries instantly die, one after another. When it seems I just cannot bear one more thing, the batteries will suddenly pop, leaving me floundering and bewildered.  OK, it is not so unusual to have a battery die.  I will put a new one in ….and the next one will instantly  stop working too.  Must be a few defective ones….try another and the same thing happens.  Must be a bad package!  Try a new pack and they keep blowing up, one after another.  So it must be that the hearing aid is bad.  First one hearing aid totally dies…..then the other one shuts down too within a few hours.

But wait!  I actually have back up aids just in case….put in a back up hearing aid and that too dies within the hour. How can this be? So I put in yet ANOTHER back up to the back up (I save everything, you can see why) …and that one dies too.  This has happened not once, but a number of times during periods of  intense stress.

It is not only the hearing aids.  Phone calls will keep disconnecting. Light bulbs also blow out more than usual during the incidences of great tension and emotional strain.   It has been so noticeably bizarre that I have wondered how much of a coincidence it is, or if some sort of energy charge comes off me to cause this.  It has happened enough that I have (jokingly, but not)  felt like some sort of low-key Carrie, unbidden, destructive phenomena swirling around my emotions.

On a particular day following a terrible personal loss, with batteries dying and light bulbs freakily popping, I reluctantly got into the car to drive my kids to an appointment.  With a non-functioning hearing aid, shaking hands and just on the verge of being late – probably too upset to attempt going anywhere – a tall box truck suddenly pulled out from a parking lot up ahead and caught some low hanging wires, ripping off a large piece of metal that anchored the cables to the telephone pole. They were pulled loose, causing a metal box to swing down from the air, Tarzan-style, crashing through my windshield and showering all of us with shattered glass.

I am not trying to be new-agey here.  All of this could be coincidence. Or not.  I am wondering if anyone else experiences this kind of an event during times of great pressure or deep grief.  Do your hearing aid batteries die when you are stressed? Does something else occur that you notice when you are grieving?  Do you think we emit some sort of electrical current that can cause these things?