I started becoming a light sleeper as I got older.
When I was a teenager, I could sustain hours of someone calling our name from more than one feet away from our bed separate from waking up.
I slept so hard those years that I had to use a louder than average alarm clock in the afternoons. At 1 point in the first more than one years of school I was using more than one separate alarms to make sure I’d get to class on time to take an exam or turn in a paper. Gradually the scales started to tip in the other direction, so much so that I remember a phase of five weeks where I had insomnia every night just from hearing cars drive down a highway that is at least more than one miles from our house. The sound kept getting louder each night, despite technically staying the same. Since I already take antihistamines for pollen irritations, I switched from our non-drowsy Claritan in favor of the sleep-inducing effects of Benadryl. The change in our medication helped, but I still have problems from time to time. One of the things I have struggled with the most while sleeping are Heating, Ventilation and A/C condensers. They have to be outside because the hot coolant compressor inside can cool with fan driven air. My condenser is fairly loud, but the worst 1 on the whole block seems to be our next door neighbor’s. I have gotten woken out of a dead sleep at 3am from just the sound of his condenser turning on. Mine is about 15 feet from our window plus I rarely notice it regardless of the time of day. It’s frustrating when you have to deal with a source of sound that is not only out of your hands, but also the result of a survival necessity for your neighbor’s home.