Last May my fiancé and I moved to Central Florida. We found a nice apartment complex, which was more expensive than we’d hoped, but after three disastrous apartments in a row, we settled on this one, which had great promise. Or so we thought. Before we even got our furniture we were bombarded by an upstairs neighbor blasting music and TV at all hours. This immediately reignited my trauma, causing a cascade of physical and mental issues. Since then, we had neighbors move in below us who also blast music with a very heavy bass at all hours, and smoke lots of pot, which comes directly up into our living room. Recently, we had new neighbors move in next to us who have an untold number of children, which scream all hours of the day, including often until 1 o’clock in the morning. I don’t know if they’re simply left alone or what is going on, but all I can say to this is, why the hell is everything so goddamn noisy? Has everyone lost their damn mind and has absolutely no respect for anyone else?

Our nervous systems and brains are not designed to deal with constant stimulus and noise, and need rest and recovery time. Some of us are more affected than others, I being among those. I didn’t used to be this bad until we were stuck with a downstairs neighbor during lockdown was severely psychotic and needed help that he was not getting. His screaming would fill our entire apartment. Police came a number of times and took him away, our landlord did absolutely nothing, and I still am suffering from severe trauma because of it. We escaped that apartment to another apartment, only to be terrorized by another downstairs neighbor who blasted bass heavy music, and smoked so much pot that it came up through the vents to the degree that we might as well just been smoking it in our apartment ourselves. Again, we called the cops numerous times, reported him numerous times to the complex, and yet no one ever did anything, only being able to escape by fleeing.

I repeat, what the hell is wrong with everyone and why can’t we just have some quiet? We all need quiet, more than we know. There’s a reason there used to be phone booths, so that people could have privacy and speak quietly. Now people are on their phones everywhere, including libraries, talking loudly, often with the speaker on as they walk around in public. And somehow in all of this I’m the crazy one. I just had to relocate my desk to the other end of our apartment because the next-door children won’t stop screaming. We have to get out of here, I refuse to believe that there’s nowhere left that I can find peace and quiet. I can’t think creatively, I can’t focus to read, my body and brain can’t heal, if they are constantly assaulted by noise. All hours of the day and night people blast bass heavy music from their cars as they race through the parking lot. On a number of occasions people (different people) have parked their cars directly outside of our building, opened all their doors, turned up their music, and proceeded to wash their car. This is complete lunacy and all I ask is for simple quiet in my own home.

(I did a deep dive and there’s no way to block bass with earplugs or anything of the like because we don’t actually experience sounds that low through our ear canals. The only thing you can try to do is mask it by adding in other sounds on a similar frequency.)

Never in my life have I wanted a house, to have to deal with everything that comes along with that, but now it seems like the only option. If we could move into a 55+ community, we would. The modern world is too damn noisy, too damn bright, too damn distracted. We can’t heal under these conditions, none of us, and we constantly see the results of this in the news. And yet our culture and society simply tell us that we still don’t have enough, that we still aren’t doing enough, and we believe it. Good God, the number of times I haven’t been able to use the bathroom at work because someone is sitting in the stall clearly watching videos or playing video games is absolute lunacy. What is wrong with you that you want to hang out in the toilet because you are so desperate to watch some video you’ll forget about in less than an hour or play some game which achieves absolutely nothing whatsoever?

I’m aware that this is a rant, but it’s also a call to arms, a desperate plea for clarity, to take a step back and look out for people around you – to even realize that there are people around you – and that your actions 100% affect them and their lives. None of us are getting out of this life alive, yet we all have the ability to help each other along the way. To help each other find a bit of peace and calm, to relax and enjoy exactly what’s going on instead of desperately trying to grab for more and more, which will always be unsatisfactory, and always leave us unfulfilled at the end of the day.

Breath. Listen. Be. Heal. And help others do the same. It doesn’t cost a penny and it may just save a life.