Welcome to The Buzz
A space for real stories, honest reflections, and small victories from life with tinnitus and hearing loss.
Here you’ll find comfort, perspective, and maybe even a laugh or two as we learn to live a little more peacefully with that damn noise.
Tinnitus — My Unexpected Lullaby
By Marie
Yep. The thing that keeps so many people awake has somehow become the very thing that helps me drift off. If you’d told me this during my early tinnitus days, I would’ve laughed, cried, or thrown a pillow. Probably all three.
But now? ⇒ It’s comforting ⇒ Predictable ⇒ Oddly soothing
I know. It sounds ridiculous. But let me explain.
♡ Sleep ♡
♡ I love my sleep ♡
If anyone asks me if I'm a night owl or an early bird, I say neither. I just like my bed. I get up early, yes, but that’s beside the point. For me, bed equals safety. It’s my soft little cave where the world can’t reach me.
- No messages to reply to.
- No phone buzzing away because it stays downstairs in the kitchen at nighttime.
- No unexpected knocks at the door.
- Nothing to be alert for.
- My brain has less to deal with.
My senses get to rest. My mind gets to chill. Everything in me gets to soften and say, “Okay… we’re done for today.”
So imagine me in the early days of tinnitus — exhausted, wired, distraught, desperate for sleep, but unable to drift off because the noise was too loud, too new, too terrifying.
Honestly, I thought I’d never know a peaceful night again.
When the Noise Becomes the Nighttime
Most people fall asleep to silence. Or to the sound of rain, or ocean waves, or that twelve-hour playlist of a cabin fire crackling softly. I even know people who use background noise that sounds almost exactly like one of my tinnitus tones. It fascinates me because they choose a sound I never asked for, a sound that crashed uninvited into my life, and yet it soothes them in a way it once tormented me.
Me? I fall asleep to the cosmic choir in my own skull. One ear crashes like an ocean wave on a rocky beach, the other hums like an electrical wire that desperately needs a day off. It shouldn’t work. But it does.
Somewhere along the way, my brain decided this sound meant “safe.” And honestly? There’s something poetic about that.
What used to be the great nighttime villain is now the familiar backdrop that helps my mind slow down. It’s a bit like sleeping near a fan that you can’t turn off and that sometimes sounds like it’s trying to communicate with other galaxies.
Tinnitus to Mars:
Come in, come in… I want to:
annoy my human, and stop them from sleeping
The Weird Comfort of Familiar Noise
I think it’s this: the sound doesn’t worry me anymore.
In the beginning it was sharp, intrusive, loud, unpredictable. The enemy. I had so much trouble sleeping. And if you’ve ever suffered from sleep issues, you’ll know the mental anguish I went through. Lack of sleep is the worst. It breaks you from the inside out. Now the sound behaves like a loyal, lingering companion who refuses to leave the room but isn’t really doing any harm.
I’m so used to it that real silence might actually be unnerving.
- What would I listen to while my thoughts unwind?
- What would fill the quiet?
- Would I even recognise the stillness?
Some nights, as I’m settling into bed, I actually tune into the sound on purpose. Not to check whether it’s still there, but because it signals that the day is done and I can switch off. It’s part of my pre-sleep routine now. A tiny internal cue that whispers, “Ah yes. The day is done. Time to rest.”
What a strange little peace treaty we’ve made.
A Little Bit of Science… or My Version of It
I like to imagine the brain as this endlessly adaptable creature, always tinkering in the background. If a noise refuses to go away, the brain will eventually shrug and say, “Well… if you’re staying, I may as well give you a purpose.” Maybe my tinnitus has become my personal white noise machine. Maybe it’s a signal of familiarity, the way some people can’t sleep unless they hear traffic or a ceiling fan. Maybe it’s a sign that acceptance digs deeper than we realise. Whatever it is, it’s working.
Soothing, Not Spiteful
Does this mean I love tinnitus? No. (but secretly ... probably. It's part of who am I now.)
Does it mean I’d panic if it disappeared? Maybe, I'm not sure.
But has it become part of how my mind slips into rest? Yes. And that still surprises me.
There was a time when bedtime terrified me. I dreaded lying there, trying to ignore the noise. That moment the world went quiet and the ringing grew louder felt like walking into battle. Now it’s the opposite. Now it’s the noise that tells me I’m safe enough to sleep.
It’s still annoying sometimes. It’s still loud. It’s still a twat. But it’s also the thing that helps me drift off.
Life is weird.
Closing Thoughts
If you’d told the earlier version of me that tinnitus would one day sing me to sleep, I would’ve absolutely lost it. But here we are.
This once-hostile sound has settled into something familiar, something steady, something that no longer threatens my peace.
Maybe that’s what adaptation really looks like.
Not perfection.
Not silence.
Just finding enough calm in the place you never thought you could.
And honestly ... Maybe silence wouldn’t lull me to sleep now anyway.
Maybe that bastard buzzing is simply part of how my nights begin.
And that’s okay.
Take care,
Marie
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