Published on 12, July, 2020
I am most comfortable with complete silence.
I wonder if this is the autism at play?
When I was growing up our house was always noisy and I think I was traumatised by it.
There were no quiet refuges - I even shared a bedroom until I left home.
My mum had to have sound on all the time. I believe she was autistic but I think she had an under sensitivity to noise, which I'm pretty sure I've read can also be an autism thing.
Then I had a series of shared flats, which were noisy, then bedsits until I purchased a quiet flat in my 30s.
Then I lived in a nice Victorian house on my own which still had some noise, as it was on a busy road in Portsmouth and terraced.
Nowadays I am lucky.
The last 15 years I have lived in a very quiet detached house where once the windows are closed there is no outside (or inside often) noise at all.
My husband is a quiet person + spends a lot of time in his studio outside.
It's taken me a long time to get to this quiet place in my life - I am now 61.
How do you respond to noise/silence?
I’m glad you have found an ideal environment, I’m lucky enough to work on my own for 8 hours a day. I very rarely have to verbally communicate, it’s what I need to keep sane. (slightly sane) I was also bought up in a noisy house, luckily it backed onto woodland so I had an escape. School as I’m sure you can appreciate was hell, especially Secondary school. Teachers love putting children into groups, I often felt like a cat in a kennel full of dogs. I think what we find with age is that we can make our lives quite liveable, we just need to set the rules and not be told what they think we need to do. I have found noise cancelling earphones a godsend.
That amazing thing of 'I can make my own rules' is a novelty that never seems to fade for me. There's still that inner child I think, the one who one day imagined having a house, a car, buying the things I wanted (sweets! Comics! Books!), staying up late etc. And he occasionally pops back up and goes 'wow', to remind me to take nothing for granted.
I still love The Beano, what I can’t find is proper sherbet lemons with a white paper bag stuck to them!