Culture Shock: It's Too Quiet Here

Contributor: Speak Coffee

I’ve spent the majority of my time since leaving college waiting to go to grad school. Waiting to hear back about housing. Deferring. Re-applying. Waiting to hear back from the school. Prepping to move. Going and realizing I didn’t want to be in that grad program. Applying to new grad program. Waiting. All this means long stretches of time when I’m not making a stellar income. And a non-stellar income means moving back in with the rents.

Despite what people may think about the 20-something mooching carelessly off his parents and living the good life, it is not so. I resent that I have to move back in. It is the last thing that I wanted to do. I hate being dependent. It is its own breed of self-esteem drain to know that the world does not consider you useful enough to employ to the point where you can pay your own rent and bills and eat at the same time.

And whatever you do, once you realize you can’t live on your own do not rent Failure to Launch like I did. Oops.

I had lived in a sorority for the three years leading up to graduation. That meant that I shared a building with 30-60 women on any given day. But unlike a dorm we didn’t lock our doors and didn’t close them unless studying or sleeping. In fact, no one had a key to lock her room with. There were constantly people around, making noise, talking, gossiping, being playful, helping, doing cartwheels in the hallway, doing something. The hardest thing about living there was finding ways to be alone when I needed to chill. But after a year I had found all the nooks and crannies in the building where people were unlikely to go and also developed a sign system. If I had to finish a paper I’d leave a Do Not Disturb until 4pm I’m Writing a Paper (Exceptions Made for Fires) sign on my door. It worked wonders. And then sometime around 6pm people would creep back in and ask me how the paper went, which was really nice of them.

Moving back in with the parental unit? It was quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. There was no noise. No sound. I could hear when the furnace clicked on. There was no one to talk to save the parental unit and that was only between when parental unit got home from work until bed. This meant there was no one to talk to after 11pm on most nights. And it was just the parental unit. No one else. No variety. No noise. No music. No cartwheels.

I escaped regularly to someplace, anyplace, with people in it. Coffee shops and bookstores were my favorites because you could stay there for hours and hours and no one gave a damn. Also no one looked at you weird when the only thing you bought was one small brewed coffee. At the bookstores, no one even expected that of you.

These places had what I craved: people!

Okay, so they were people I didn’t know. And I generally didn’t have great gossipy conversations with them, didn’t chat, didn’t console or comfort any of them. Actually I found it remarkable when I exchanged more than a dozen words with anyone person. But that was okay. I talked to some people at work for longer periods even though I didn’t consider any of them friends. And I could always phone someone from college. Still, being on the phone with them wasn’t the same as having noise and action and color surrounding me.

I still do it sometimes. Even when I had roommates and classes again I’d stride out into the world as much to get away from the roommates as to see and feel and hear something different than my climate controlled box living.

My roommates from that point ... well, that is an entire post of its own.