During my childhood, I was constantly traumatized by the sound of the fire alarm in the old apartments that I used to live in. The alarms were both abrupt and loud, make them disruptive and terrifying to my sensitive autistic mind.
The worst part was that most of these alarms were not due to fire at all, but rather triggered by paranoid and bluntly stupid people who think they were having a crisis when it’s just minor issues like the laundry machine acting odd.
There was even one time when some woman was cooking food (probably curry) which emitted so much fucking smoke, and she even left the door open! That caused the smoke detectors to go off hard, and then the fire alarms...
If it weren't for moronic people abusing the fire alarm systems, I won’t have this much sensory trauma throughout my early childhood.
Those experiences has led me and my family to move to a house instead of another ghetto apartment. I was begging to them to do this for the sake of my sanity. Now I’ve been living in suburban homes ever since.
Recently, I was having a conversation with someone about the house affordability crisis worldwide, and the thought about moving to a modern apartment or condo as a cheaper alternative to a suburban home, and if the alarm systems there are less harsh than in the past. They argued that even if the alarms are harsh, it’s still ‘necessary’ because people – especially deaf people – NEED to hear them in order to be aware that there’s a potential fire in the building. But I argued that there are many sensitive people like me who cannot live in places like that, and architects who forces these kind of environments to everyone is wrong.
I just don’t want an alarm that randomly goes off all the fucking time for no good reason. It’s fine if it there’s an alarm due to actual smoke or carbon monoxide, but other than that, that thing needs to keep it’s mouth shut when I’m living in the house or apartment.
My family member often thinks that I’m ‘overthinking’ about things like the WiFi when we were having problems with it, or something philosophical or political about the future. Despite them knowing that I’m autistic and tend to have hyper-fixations sometimes, they still don’t know the full scope of my patterns. In my opinion, being a deep thinker is a good thing, because I have more time to think about many things while others have less time due to their social lives or other factors.
I generally prefer to read the articles or written lessons instead of watching a video. When I read, there's no other stimuli present like audio, so I become more focused.
When I view new information, especially more complex ones, my brain works very hard to process them. This makes the learning experience uncomfortable and exhausting.
So what I do is read the text little by little first, and then reread them after a certain period of time (days or weeks). Every time I review text, it feels easier to process the information than the previous time. The more comfortable I feel processing things, the better I learn them.
I never realized that my body and soul needs to be in a library.
Every time I'm in a crowded mall, especially during weekends in the afternoon, I feel overwhelmed. People kept walking in and out without consistent pacing or direction, nor do they often have manners when they bump into me or not move out of the way when I need to pass though. People are also too fucking loud, especially those annoying kids when they goof off in public. I remember seeing a boy and his dumbass father making pterodactyl noises for fun while I was there drinking my decaf latte at Second Cup close by. I kept thinking to myself “Yall have no awareness, manners, self-control, or respect for other people...”.
My mind kept screaming “I want to get the fuck outta here PLEASE! I want to find someplace quieter”. But there was rarely any remotely quiet places in this noisy hellscape...
The other day, I try to build a habit of going to a library more often for a change of pace. And I often feel much more peaceful with that kind of environment. I can use the computers or just read some interesting books in the absence of people chatting or their fucking awful body odor. But there are times when kids come to the library after school hours and start running around and playing loudly (where's the librarian lady when we needed her to tell these kids to STFU? Once again, parents are failing to tech their children self-control and respect to people's peace...)
The library has calm me down quite a bit in a time of a major depressive episode. I didn't have to always be in the presence of obnoxious people, (including my family). I had a small place to myself, sensory speaking.
– v -
For many years, I was binging on countless random YouTube videos for most hours everyday. Videos like gameplays, drama videos, political news, and video essays.
Back then, I craved for constant stimulation. Otherwise I would feel bored to death. And whenever my family or other people in public wanted to talk to me or help them with somethings, I tend to get irritated and told them to leave me alone. All I cared about was the noise from my phone...
But since I've been progressing from addictive habits to more healthier ones like reading, journaling, and listening to music, I feel much more calm and less irritable. This time, my brain crave for relaxation and learning something meaningful.
Nowadays, I feel I don't even want to go back to the binging days ever again. I rather be in peace than being addicted to pointless and overwhelming activities.
The more I'm being careful with my habits on the internet, the more I realize the truth: my attention is limited during the day, as if it's like a cognitive currency. So I have to be smarter with how I use this.
These days, I've been planning on what to consume and for how long, as well as when to take breaks. It takes quite a bit of thinking, but it's better than draining my attention on pointless things.
