I've never lived in a city before. My college was definitely NOT in a city location. There were not any streets through campus, even. Now, I am at graduate school in a fairly big city. Probably one of the largest 10 cities in the country. I live in campus housing, so I'm super close to campus (and also then I didn't have to find a lease or anything like that).
But cities are loud.
My campus has a hospital. I am near the end of campus that has the hospital. That's actually super convenient, since most of the biology research buildings are located near the hospital. The not-so-nice-part? Hospitals means ambulances. Ambulances mean sirens. Sirens are loud. There are several an hour. Even at night, because people still get injured and in car crashes and have heart attacks at 3:30 am. (There are less sirens, but that's probably because there is no traffic so they don't need to turn the sirens on and just have the flashing lights instead). And I feel bad that sirens upset me, since obviously they are important, and the people in the ambulances are probably having a worse day than I am.
There are also cars and people and people in other apartments, who admittedly I very rarely hear, but I think take showers at weird times so I can hear that too in the middle of the night.
And someone has a baby, and babies also cry. (It's not their fault, and I rather like babies, and I certainly wouldn't tell people with a baby crying in their own apartment to stop it, because really I don't think that would do much, but it is still NOISE.)
Cities are also bright. I need to buy blackout curtains for my apartment (it has shades but light can still come through it). Because my room is so bright all night long. There are so many lights all night long. But to do that I have to go to a store and make decisions and be around people. And that is hard. Especially when I'm tired from being kept up all night by sirens and bright lights.
Labels: adventures in apartment living, autism, fitting in, me, rant
