While I slept last night, my cat chewed through my Apple earphones.

You can't imagine how much this distresses me.

I mean, I was set up to do something different this morning. I wouldn't eat breakfast at home; instead I would go to the Starbucks next door, maybe stay there for an hour just getting lost in my thoughts elsewhere. My earphones would come in handy. I would stream a radio station - I hadn't decided - and have my mind travel elsewhere while I stared out the window.

But nope. My cat chewed through my earphones. It's still working, but only on one ear, and that, frankly, is worse than having a pair of earphones that doesn't work at all. It really throws you off the grid.

I was hoping that pair would last me for a year. I've used wired earphones of varying brands all my life, and I use them far too much that they last an average of just three months. Maybe six months now, because I don't travel as much as I did when I was still a college student.

You can say I should probably be buying wireless earphones now, but I have this paranoia that I would break them because I use them so often. Imagine spending a tenth of my monthly salary on Bluetooth earphones that I would break in three (or six) months. Not really worth it, yeah? I get the value proposition, but I go through these things a lot, so yeah, wired earphones it is.

You can also say I should not buy Apple earphones because they are way too expensive. But I specifically got one - the ones with the Lightning thing at the end - specifically for use only on my phone. I could use the other pair I have that I use with my laptop, but that means using a dongle that fits into my Lightning port. Damn Apple for forcing me to spend thousands on peripherals that don't work elsewhere - and it's about time you switched to USB-C. But I digress. The two-earphone set-up works because it prolongs the life of both my earphones and the dongle, which I now exclusively use in my car that's old enough to not come with Bluetooth audio as standard.

But, here we are. My cat chewed through my earphones, and I bet you still can't imagine how much this distresses me.

All right, it probably is my fault. I was on the phone last night and didn't store that pair away before I slept. But in my defense, I hid it under my pillow. My cat somehow got to them and left - in the course of an hour, I guess - three bitemarks that rendered the left ear silent. Ruthless efficiency, just as Mother Nature intended. Now, I have to shell out a thousand more bucks to replace it. It can't even survive a year? I remember buying it at the Power Mac in the DLSU campus. I remember the small talk I made with the staff there. When I was a student, this didn't exist. You know, the usual "I'm old now" thing. Do they offer discounted prices for students? For alumni? But I don't even have an alumni card. When I graduated they gave us ones that only had a three-year validity...

Shut up, Niko, I hear you say. Who cares about all this? They're just earphones. Just buy a new pair.

Well, I'm not fretting visibly, unless you count how passionately I am writing this down on my soon-to-be-replaced laptop. And perhaps by now I've moved on and am just writing this thing down for posterity. "To process it," as a friend would say. I don't know. I felt it's a good idea to write about why something as minor as a cat chewing on your earphones would distress me as much as it did at seven this morning.

But I also know that you don't care. You probably think all this is trivial, that I'm just making a big deal out of nothing. I've heard that before, for real, from a lot of people. Can you live without anything plugged into your ears? I can, but sometimes I don't want to. I'm not overly reliant on it, but you never know when you need some slightly warmer company. Just like the folks on TV, then. I can never understand you neurodivergent folk.

Oh boy, here we go.

Yes, I know, I just thought of that whole scenario up as I walked back from the coffee shop, after just half an hour instead of an hour, thinking of when I would be able to buy a replacement for that chewed up pair of earphones. But I've heard variations of that neurodivergent bit enough to know that it would probably be coming, to me, specifically. I was "weird" enough in high school for what seemed to be the entire school population - not just the freshmen, but everyone - to justify bullying me. It was cool to call me "autistic" at the time. It was a most difficult three months that somehow ended with me being kicked out for slapping someone. First offense. You can't call that a coup de grâce because no one among my tormentors was punished. So, imagine trying to be as "normal" as possible in the decades since. Imagine being very hard on yourself when you do have outbursts, no matter how much you try to control yourself, no matter how few and far between they actually have become. Imagine being told you do not deserve to be loved because, among many other things, you are neurodivergent.

Yes, I was diagnosed with ADHD in high school, and among many things it helped me understand why I can be fixated with British radio schedules and the doomed fate of my earphones at the claws of my otherwise floofy cat. (This is why I have a series of essays called Hyperfocus.) One of the first things I was taught to do is to never use it as an excuse for the things I do. "I'm sorry I shouted at you; it's because I have ADHD," that sort of thing. But I'll admit it is great to see people talk about it now on social media... or it was great, until it became clear that the vast majority of people were cherry-picking the socially acceptable "quirky" bits and using it to make themselves look good. "I have ADHD, and that's why I can't organize my room! Aren't I cute?" It's suspiciously similar to all the depression talk I still see online these days. It's all about looking good, while hoping nobody notices you sweeping the bad things that can (and can) be addressed under the rug because they're inconvenient and complex and can't be wished away.

I mean, who wants to say "you're unlovable because you're neurodivergent" in public?

Ah, crap, look at what a chewed up pair of earphones can do. I can just cat-proof the house, hide all the cords, buy one of those repellant sprays... but... can I use my ADHD as an excuse now, or should I just talk about all the other things I have to do? Never mind, I'm sorry, I will not play the victim and I will take control of my narrative, sorry, thanks for your time anyway.