It's the Textures!

My tastebuds are recovering, and I've got a bit of my taste and smell back, but two days ago when I had neither was one of the most surreal days of my life. 

I've been hypersensitive with those two senses my entire life. If there's a pungent smell around, I'll be the first to smell it and all my attention will be on it. Focusing outwardly won't occur until the smell is gone. As for tastes, that too has been a challenge my entire life and I've been one of the pickiest eaters anyone in my family has known. However, I always thought it was about the taste, but losing the sense of taste shed some light as to what was really going on.

It was odd debating what I was going to eat on Sunday because taste was not a factor. Why was I saying "no" to some things? It didn't make much sense, but my tendencies were to get what I had always got. When I tried a couple new things there was one thing I enjoyed and one thing that made me have a snap "no" response. No? How? If taste isn't a thing what caused it? It was the textures of the food.

I wish I would've been able to verbalize this as a child, or even a dozen years ago. When I don't like a food, it isn't so much the taste but rather it is primarily the texture of it. It does make sense though, now that I've experienced it, that since certain fabrics gives me a negative reaction to my skin it would make sense that certain food textures would have a similar reaction.

Having those words and understanding as a child would've made a gigantic difference. "But it tastes like your favorite..." was a common sentence opening, but when one is just looking at it from a taste perspective and not a texture perspective there is no chance for understanding.

I'm anxious for my smell and taste to return. I always said I wanted a filter but after experiencing a full filter on those senses, I never want to go back. It can be distracting at times to be hypersensitive, but that's what makes me who I am, and I would much rather live life unfiltered than to have a muted sensory system that provides a filter.