(by an anonymous contributor, a Noosa Shire resident)
This is something I’ve been grappling with.
We have a home, in a lovely place. We can smell the salty air. We are happy. We are a fairly normal family who are in regular paid employment and our kids go to a nice school.
We have holidays from time to time and we love our two dogs and cat (well maybe not the cat so much, but that’s another story). We are lucky. We shouldn’t have much to complain about.
So when someone buys the house next door in your nice, quiet neighbourhood and rents it out to people who want to come to Noosa and experience it’s beauty, it feels a bit mean to not want them to enjoy themselves. They should be able to come and have fun in our lovely town, shouldn’t they? So you have a few sleepless nights whilst they are in party mode- it’s not the end of the world, is it? I mean, you can sleep tomorrow, or whenever they finally leave. So you roll over, put in some earplugs and tell yourself that it will be better next time. That you don’t have to leave. That it will all be okay. That you’re overreacting because of…. (insert some excuse).
When you call the property owner in the middle of the night, of course they don’t answer. Why would they? They don’t live next door to anarchy. So you go a little bit crazy. In the small hours of the morning, everything seems worse, but at some stage you calm down enough to get some sleep, and when the sun comes up in the morning you fill out your gratitude journal, and remind yourself that you are lucky and try to pretend that you were over-reacting. But a little part of you is ashamed. Because you know it IS a big deal. That it’s NOT right. But maybe you have been told that good girls shouldn’t rock the boat. Or that it wasn’t as bad as what you were making out. So you avoid the confrontation. And the damage goes on.
Some of this might sound familiar, if you have read anything about people who survive trauma. The self doubt. The playing down of events. The betrayal of self.
The Vic Gov website says that some common reactions to trauma are:
feeling as if you are in a state of ‘high alert’ and are ‘on watch’ for anything else that might happen
feeling emotionally numb, as if in a state of ‘shock’
becoming emotional and upset
feeling extremely fatigued and tired
feeling very stressed and/or anxious
being very protective of others including family and friends
not wanting to leave a particular place for fear of ‘what might happen’.
So if you are feeling any of these things, if you feel a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when the new ‘guests’ arrive, if you are exhausted, if you can’t see any clear way out, if you feel like you are powerless to do anything.. then maybe you are experiencing a trauma reaction.
And maybe it’s time to talk to someone.
We can start with calling the property owner, then emailing council, calling the police if we want the disturbance handle (131444 if after hours) [Editor's update, 2023: If this is a registered Short Stay Let premises, i.e. it has a sign out the front with the permit number, first cal the Noosa Council 24 hour hotline on 5329 6466.] and maybe even a trauma counsellor. These feelings should not be kept inside. We owe it to ourselves to take care of our hearts.
And we are not silly, weak, or unreasonable to want to go about our lives in peace. This is trauma.
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