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.

#actuallyautistic #neurodivergent #sensoryoverload #childhood #housing #blog