The person who lives under my apartment has a TV. Not in his living room, in his bedroom. He plays it loud enough to be heard through the floorboards, in my room, and through my door into the adjoining room. He plays his TV at 8 AM, 1 PM, 8 PM, midnight... 4 AM. And all times in between, doesn't even fucking matter. At any given time its random if TV guy's TV will be on, but its for many hours at a time usually. Sometimes he falls asleep and leaves it on. But even if he doesn't, its OK, he snores like a fucking bull. Often the TV is so loud that with noise canceling earphones, playing loud white noise into my ears I can still hear it. The only way to block it out without hurting my ears to play really high energy music, but I'm often not in the mood for that music say when I get home from work. Which by the way is fucking 1 in the morning
I have a condition called auditory processing disorder. It might not be its own thing, it might just be an additional effect of certain types of ADD, but the point is its real to me and ADD meds don't work on it. Anyway, the condition. My brain works fine, my ears work fine. Something about the connection between them does not and all noise is like... like when you're listening to a song and you can't quite tell what the lyrics are so you have to piece together what the singer is saying syllable by syllable, and sometimes you get it wrong. That's all sound for me all the time, like I literally don't know what a bunch of my coworkers are named because I couldn't hear the first time I heard their names and at some point it became awkward to ask. If that was the only problem I would be a happy camper, but no. See all sound is distracting to me. If I'm already trying to pay attention to the sound that's fine. But if I'm not, well. Ever had someone wave their hand directly in front of your eyes? Its aggravating right? That's what all sound is like to me, all the time, no exceptions. If home is noisey and my commute is noisey and work is noisey, that's an entire day in which I couldn't even think. This thing that half of doctors can't even agree exists and no one has ever heard of has essentially ruined my entire life.
My standard for "quiet" is that I can't hear sound. Any amount, ANY AMOUNT, of sound counts as distracting noise. And I know that's not a fair standard, and I know I can't reasonably get mad at people for this, but I do. And research has shown that this is simply how people with APD react to noise, with intense irrational anger. Anger management techniques don't work, therapy (with the exception of one specific type that works best when you're 10 or less, I'm 23) doesn't help. As long as its quiet, I *am* a calm person, I do have very good techniques for managing emotion and managing anger but it doesn't fucking matter because I. Can't. Deal. With. This.
And the thing is there's nowhere to go. Everywhere I live is going to be like this. A quiet home the city would cost more than I can afford, and I can't own a car for multiple reasons, so rural or cheap suburban is out. My parents do have a fairly ritzy house in a quiet neighborhood but it would be very unhealthy to go back to them and the worst thing is, the WORST fucking thing is that even tho I have repeatedly tried to explain to them how this works they won't listen and they won't accommodate me. Back home is almost as bad as here noise wise, despite the fact that its a free standing house and the only noise comes from them and their dogs. And like I can't just keep uprooting myself every time someone else makes my living situation hell without understanding, because then I'd be moving every two weeks. Fundamentally my perspective is so unusual that other people won't understand it. I already told this guy to turn down his TV and he did slightly for a while and then bounced back, that's how absolutely everyone reacts. Turn the sound down a little and then just turn it back up later. People don't fucking get it. And like yeah I totally could call the cops on this guy and probably get some mileage if nothing else because he blasts his TV at 4 in the morning, but like. The cops would tell him to quiet down but it doesn't matter because he will and then I can't call the cops again because they'll just more-or-less correctly tell me to get over it.
I don't have a laptop either, I have a desktop because I naively believed I wouldn't have to be constantly moving around in my own home. I'm just using headphones for my computer, I don't have a speaker system. But there's nothing left but to order some speakers, point them straight into the floor, and then blast
loud people memes and
music that I don't mind but older men might. At 2 in the morning. You ruin my life for no reason, I'll ruin yours. Fuck you TV guy.
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9498799 times)