Why We Lose Ourselves in My Mother’s House

We live in a place where every day feels like a fight just to stay yourself. Where silence is never truly silent.
Where surviving means something very different than having enough food or money.

In this post, I’ll take you through just three days of our life.
Three days filled with noise, smells, movement, disruption;
everything you don’t see if you only know our situation from the outside.

For anyone wondering why we are so desperate to find a place in nature: this is why.

People sometimes ask: “Is it really that bad?” And then I don’t even know where to begin. Because it’s not one thing. It’s everything.
All at once. Over and over again.


Here’s just a glimpse of what hit us over the past three days:



🌅 Morning sounds:

Loud talking and walking from my mother as soon as she wakes up

The sound of heavy footsteps echoing through the house in the early morning

Delivery workers ringing the doorbell, shouting into the street

Construction noises in the apartment building: grinding and scraping

Smoke from neighbor boys who smoke in their garden several times a day; it blows directly into ours




🔁 Ongoing background noise (constant or repeated):

A crying child next door, all day long

Barking from the dachshund three gardens away several times a day

Endless yapping from a chihuahua that’s left alone all day

Children playing on the field behind our house

Rolling garbage bins

Construction work:

Two gardens away

In a nearby apartment after someone moved out

A worker installing automated doors in the building behind ours


Highway (A12) traffic noise, constant when the wind comes from the south

Neighbor boys revving their tuned-up fatbikes under our window

Motorbikes roaring on the highway whenever the weather is good




🚨 City noise and disruptive incidents:

Pile driving at the end of our street

Dozens of rounds by a rozzer helicopter over our house (someone armed near the university)

Fire trucks racing down our street with sirens due to a burning van nearby

Countless sirens on surrounding motorways

A light aircraft pulling an ad banner doing circles above the football stadium

A helicopter from Hilversum doing weekly surveillance flights




🏘️ Immediate environment & family:

Neighbors packing their cars for vacation, parents and kids shouting

My mother yelling on the phone for an hour in the hallway at night, dragging us into her conversations while we’re trying to fall asleep around 21:30

Cigarette smoke from the same boys drifting into our room again at night

Us hiding under the covers, trying to block the smell with anything we can find




🎉 Weekend and seasonal disturbances:

Festival sounds in the background every weekend for months

Barbecue birthday party at the neighbors’, loud voices (Italian family)

Party on the field behind the house




This was just three days. Not a special period. Not extraordinary circumstances. Just… life as it unfolds here.

And we’re right in the middle of it, with a body that keeps trying harder and harder to protect what little is left of our nervous system.



But for how long? We’re still searching for a temporary or permanent piece of land where we can park our old camper and recover in silence, and slowly rebuild the life that fits us.

If you know of something – a piece of land, a corner of a farm, someone with space, a community that understands: please let us know.

And if you’d like to support us: you can help by donating via Ko-fi,
or simply by sharing this story with someone who might understand.


Every form of support is a drop of peace in a sea of overstimulation.

Thank you.