not made for living in crowded area

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These are my thoughts about how i can see myself living in the future.

I realised that i feel great when i go to the forest, almost no people, no cars, you hardly hear the highway. This pressure falls of my shoulders because everywhere i go i know that nobody will be seeing me, i don't have to pay attention to the way i walk or the things i look at. There is no feeling of time, some of my happiest moments are just spent walking in nature, thinking or not thinking about things.

I also noticed that my symptoms are comming on stronger, i think this is because i moved to the city. I need increasing time alone, and there is less room for social activity. This results in a decrease in my ability to expand my social circle because the energy i have is spent on maintaining already established contacts (which is also decreasing). I get really annoyed by cars, even creating a hatred for them when i am tired, i visualize the fumes spewed by all the cars passing me while i am walking/riding my bike. Being disgusted by the way we live and treat our planet adds another layer to my annoyance with living in a city. Most of the time i feel alright, but there is this constant pressure on my mind that i do not feel when i am in nature. This makes a huge difference for me.

I want to get away from people, i want to live in a place where you do not hear or see any cars. I realize this cannot be achieved in the country i live in atm, its one of the most crowded places on earth.
The language(culture) is also limiting, preventing people from talking about topics that would cause no shame for the speaker if it was said in english. I do not have any specific country's in mind yet. It largely depends on where i am able to get a job, freelance is going to be hard because it takes a lot of networking. I think i can be happy living in solitude because that is basically what i am doing right now. Only without the irritation caused by overcrowded areas. I have dabbled a bit in medidation and spirituality and i like it a lot, budhism interests me i see living amongst monks as a possible option too.

Where do you see yourself in the next years ?.
Are there any aspies out there who LIKE living in crowded areas ?.

Living in a crowded area, while that aspect of things is difficult, has been a small price to pay in order not to have any children around in that neighbourhood and the trauma that would cause someone like me.

wait,, are you saying that seeing children causes you trauma ?.

I live in Greater London (technically I live in the Surrey area as my postcode is not a London postcode). It is not quiet as I live next to a dual carriageway with a large hospital two minutes' walk away (ambulances often screeching down the road) and a main police station a mile away (hence police sirens too).

But I could never live in Central London, or even any part of the main London area.

At least here I have access to Wimbledon Common and other commons. My area has nowhere near as many people as there are in Central London.

I live in government-funded supported housing for people with mental health problems, but I usually have the whole house to myself as I study at home a lot while everyone else goes out!

But I agree with you. I used to fantasize about living in the middle of Wimbledon Common......

I can't actually go to Central London alone; I get very agitated.....I even have a full-time support worker at university (which is in central London).

I can't tell you how much I hate living in a crowded area and how much rage I feel just getting around. I'd sound psychotic if I described my thoughts as I get around my city.

I couldn't live in countryside though, as I don't drive.

I live out in the country, with a fair amount of space between mine and my neighbors' houses. I don't think I could live in a more populated area, much less a city. The only time I've ever lived in a crowded space was college. I couldn't stand living in the dorms, it was a nightmare.

Basically, yes, as I have suffered quite disproportionately from the social Molotov cocktail of antisocial behaviour and paedophile hysteria.

I lived in a pretty crowded city, in both urban and suburban areas, for 37 years then moved to a small rural area a long way from any city. There are pros and cons to each.

There is safety in small places and it's very quiet, and even people who lives miles out of the town with no neighbors for miles are safe, and of course it's quiet. People are very willing to go out of their way to help you out in these kinds of areas as well. There is more of a "neighborly" atmosphere in these places, even among those whose nearest neighbor is 5 miles away.

The cons are the complete and total lack of privacy outside your own home. Everyone either knows everyone else or at least knows who they are. It's impossible to be anonymous. You cannot go to the store without seeing at least 5 or 6 people that you know well enough to have to speak to and ask how they are, and about their families, etc. You cannot go out for a meal at a restaurant without at least once, someone you know fairly well stopping by your table to interrupt you just to "speak", which means talking for several minutes. Making nicities. Asking after each others "kin". It's very judgemental too. If you buy beer in the grocery store, it will get around that you are drinking. You cannot do anything without everybody else knowing. An example of this is about six months ago my single friend thought she might be pregnant. She was worried and her car was in the shop, so I went to the drug store and bought a pregnancy test. The girl who rung me up didn't say anything about that, we talked about other stuff, and I had said nothing to anybody else. Within a week, my oldest daughter came home from school and told me that somebody told her that they heard I was pregnant. My husband had a vasectomy 14 years ago. So, the girl at the register told somebody else and it went from there. It's no skin off my nose, I knew people would talk. If I didn't want them to talk about me for buying it, I would have specifically said it was for a friend. However, everyone knows who is friends with whom, and I only have one friend in town, so everybody would have talked about her, worse than they already do.

Also, in the city you have more option. I have one place I can take a vehicle that needs work. I have a choice of a few gas stations, but the prices and gas are the same because the same man owns them. I have a choice of three fast food places and two restaurants, both serving BBQ. I have a choice to buy groceries at the small grocery store or at the big Wal Mart. Both are staffed by people from town. I have two choices of banks. I have two choices of drug stores. I have two choices of doctors, with no specialists at all. I have one choice for a mental health professional, at the one satellite clinic. I have the choice to buy clothing from Wal Mart or one small shop. I have no book stores except one Christian book seller. The only thing I have a larger selection in is churches, but there are only a few denominations, but many, many individual churches of them. My denomination isn't in town, it's about 50 miles away. There is no entertainment for kids in town, nothing to do on a weekend night.

I feel more closed in, in the big open spaces we live in than I did in the crowded city conditions where there were people around me, and noise, 24/7.

Even if you choose to move somewhere out, miles from neighbors and town, unless you plan to stock up on everything, farm, raise livestock, be completely self sufficient, you will still have to go to town to trade. You will need to buy supplies or to shop for something that you can't make at home. Keep in mind that lots of those out of the way places have absolutely no internet so you can't just shop online. People will know you and know where you live and who you are, etc. You will not have any privacy, even though you think you do, because especially if you live out, keep to yourself, don't go to church around there, know no one else, don't go to the local high school football games, etc, you will become a topic of conversation around town for a very long time and any sighting of you, and what you buy, will be gossiped around town faster than news of the preacher cheating on his wife.

Yes this is a major downside to living in a small town or rural area. I get around some of this by doing most of my shopping and business in a bigger town a half hour away, which I have to do anyway because the things I need are not available in my own community. I still run into people I know there too but not as much. I do find myself wishing for more anonymity, or convenience. But I think the privacy I have at home is worth the trade off. I never know if people gossip about me because I am completely out of the loop on anything like that.

I am currently in the middle of planning and sorting things out so that I can leave the city I live in, leave my job and go and live in a caravan on a farm to get away from being around the chaos living in a city brings.
The farm is only about 10 miles away from the city, so my wife can still get to work easily and we are still close to friends and family. I just needed to get away from the rat race as it frazzles my brain trying to work out how to survive in it.
The caravan is plenty big enough for myself, my wife and our 2 cats and it is a lot cheaper.
My wife earns enough money for us to live relatively comfortably, which will make leaving work a bit easier and will mean I can look for a part time job without the finacial stress of being out of work.

So I can relate to the thoughts that you have about how you would like to see yourself living.

Phil.

this sounds great. And a caravan means you can relocate anytime you want right.

The small community gossip is what i am used to living up with to a certain extent, i just pulled out from the social scene in my village because of this. I gues there is no way around it, unless some cultures are striclty against gossip which is hard to imagine (its human nature).
I imagine it can bring good things as well, you can be sure to always have atleast some neighbours willing to have a friendly chat. Being in complete solitude is a bit too much also.

I lived in a country town for 20 years and no one really knew who I was or what I was up to.

I'm getting used to city life except I avoid the shops like there's bubonic plague going around during this Christmas season.

The metro area causes me sensory distress but I can turn down the volume of light and sound. The image clutter I don't know how to deal with. The village community I live in is actually quite tight together, more so than the country town folk.

The shops are easy to get to and you don't really need to drive. If I run out of food and have some money I can buy a pizza, fish and chips or some takeaway noodles. It can be expensive so I don't want to do that a lot but it's good for when I can't be bothered to go to the corner shop that is a two minute walk from my house.