Street noise and life

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I can study in silence.
I can study in coffee shops, where the noises are a blur of talking that has nothing to do with me.
I can study listening to white noise. 

But I can't study at home because I live right over a street. The car passing noise is aperiodic, the loudness of it is aperiodic, and there are different noises for different kinds of vehicles. When a truck or bus passes, it causes vibrations in the building structure, and these continual, aperiodic vibrations can even give me a kind of motion sickness. Earplugs probably only bring it down by 20%. 

It doesn't stop until around midnight on weekdays and around 2am on the weekends. I never get to sleep before midnight anymore, so I continue to lose large amounts of sleep. I used say I need 9hrs a night. When I got that I was prolific with my work. Now I usually get less than six hours. 

I feel like I'm headed toward a big meltdown. I start to feel worse when my mom and sister are actually feeling good, and when I complain a little I get childish, defensive responses or just no responses of the "do you know how much I do for you" sort. It makes me angry that they have the quiet room in our apartment, get more sleep than I do, and drive a car everywhere most of the time. I don't have a car, so on top of it, I have to get up and lose several hours a day riding my bike, waiting at bus stops, on buses, etc. I'm underweight even thought I eat more than both of them combined. I end up eating crap out of vending machines, more sugar than I should because I get dehydrated really easily, and because I don't want to come all the way home to eat, and I never have time to pack a lunch, and I usually have to carry so many books around that the addition of a lunchbag is not attractive. And my college is so huge that all the places at it that you can get food are swarming with people all day long. And its getting close to summer again, and I live in a part of the country that was not meant for humans to inhabit. 

My NP said she'd write a letter so we could change apartments, but that hasn't showed up yet, and the semester is over in about three weeks, and I am progressing toward screwing up the opportunity I had this semester with an independent study. My department staff believed in me, and I feel like I'm going to end up letting them down, and not getting the chance for another independent study again.

And these are only the practical things. My parents finally split up last semester, which is when we moved to an apartment. My dad gave me a computer he said would work and it crashed a couple weeks into the semester, so I told my department staff I'd be doing way more computer work than I've been able to do. Then my dad said he wouldn't help us anymore with any money (he told this to my mom on my sister's birthday), moved to a different city and just left the house (which has mold among other problems) to my mom to deal with, so every couple weeks it has been this: "we're out of money this week, I'm going to have to try to sell the -- at the house" so there has been a lot of emotional dumping on me. And we have two cats that need homes now, and already have a dog and two cats against our apartment contract.

Then I got sick for more than a week and was running fevers and getting migraines and could barely walk up stairs. That robbed me of my whole spring break I was planning on spending at the library catching up. 

I wish I could tell my department staff that I have things like this working against me, but I don't want to sound like one of those people that suddenly spills out their life story on someone after not completing an assignment. I've learned that no one wants to hear it (or read it is what it would be in my case because I have speech difficulties, especially over emotional content) and unless they are the great, energetic, friendly, brilliant kind and so far in my life I've known only a couple of ppl like this, they'll really just ignore you and then act ambivalent about talking to you again. And there's really not a lot that those great friendly people can do except affirm that you aren't just being lazy and making excuses, and not treat you any differently after hearing about bad stuff in your life. 


so the lesson of this story is: life is unfair and you are on your own. and that's the lesson about 95% of the time.

Would you like a virtual hug? *extends arms*
Perhaps you should talk to your department staff after all--if you are going to fail in your endeavors anyways due to all of the stress, it would be worth it to make every attempt you reasonably can at getting help and make it known that you did everything in your power to succeed. Relying on others is not as big of a weakness as they would like you to believe it is. People do care--more than they are willing to reveal, even.
At any rate, I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors and hope that you do achieve independent study. May prosperity and kindness come your way.
Half the battle is believing that there is still hope. This portion is the most difficult at times, yes, but it is also the most vital.
As for the noise--have you ever tried playing music through those earphones to negate the sound? I've heard that they have noise-abating white-noise C.D.s that can relax the brain and blot out surrounding distracts. Classical music also helps a bit with this.