Muffled

I have a cold, not a bad one, but it's shrouded my hearing.  I didn't turn the volume dial up on the way home, it was not silent but the radio talked at itself.  The engine mumbled, and I tried to imagine hearing the rain falling on my windscreen, but even the occasional squeak of the wipers was muffled today.  It makes me feel very distant, cut off.  Being wrapped in cotton wool is always supposed to be comforting but I feel slightly panicked, as if the sounds will never come back, I will remain forever marginal, liminal.  A figure in a parallel mist world.