Slow

They say complex trauma is bound to the past — though really, everything is bound to the past. Who you are, where you come from, how you’ve lived, how much you’ve endured, how much of yourself you’ve neglected along the way. And if it’s true that healing from trauma isn’t about returning to who you once were, but about discovering who you are now, then my own adventure is already underway.

We live in a beautiful place. The most beautiful place I’ve ever lived, in fact. A dream I’d carried for the last four years — to live in a house — has finally come true. Yes, it’s rented, and yes, like everything in this life, nothing is guaranteed, least of all a lease, but it’s a dream come true all the same. I say this because I love security, and yet whenever I actually have it, in one form or another, my mind starts painting these abstract, almost apocalyptic pictures — because it simply doesn’t believe in security. What I mean is, living in this house, which we rented almost entirely unfurnished, empty room after empty room, and the fact that I haven’t worked in over a year, makes furnishing it nearly impossible at this stage.

And yet — here I am, sitting on a soft sheepskin rug on the floor, with an old lamp beside me, and you know what? I feel, somehow, happy. No anxiety, no guilt, no stress, no rushing. It’s strange. I used to be the person with three backup plans, always knowing exactly where I stood and why I was doing something, always scouting for the exit before I’d even walk through a door.

Now I have nothing, and for the first time, I feel completely at peace right where I am. There’s still, of course, someone inside me who keeps nudging, keeps needling — “well, what now?”, “when are you going to get yourself together and go back to work?”, “look at you — just sitting there, doing nothing” — and I’ve stopped trying to silence that voice. I just let it pass through, let it say its piece. I stopped fighting it, and somehow, it lost its grip on me.

Who knows — maybe this is temporary, maybe it’ll last a day or two. But that doesn’t matter. Here and now, this is how it is, and that in itself is entirely new to me.

Have I found some kind of inner peace, or is it simply that when you have less, you’re happier?

I remember how much I grieved over the things I left behind when we set off. It was a purely physical kind of suffering — I truly believed that without them near me, I couldn’t go on living the life I wanted, the life I’d dreamed of for so long. Well, I don’t have them. I don’t even know if I’ll ever go back for them. But right now, at least, I don’t feel that absence — the one that used to ache in me just from thinking about them, from picturing them in my head.

Having fewer belongings, it turns out, after years of living abroad, becomes having fewer friends too — they’re all far away, and not just in kilometers. Your rhythms change, as if your lives are running along parallel universes that sometimes drift close enough to touch, and sometimes veer off entirely in their own direction. And no matter how much social media gives you the illusion of closeness, some sense of togetherness, you’re different now, on an entirely different level.

I don’t know if this feeling is unique to living in a Scandinavian country — one particularly known for how hard it is to truly belong here, for how little need, or desire, people have for new additions to their circle of friends. Making friends here, in the best case, takes years. In my case, at least, that’s simply a fact.

There are moments when I want to turn back time — to sit with a friend, share a glass or two of wine, laugh over our little dramas — and at the same time, I recognize that what I actually crave, quite selfishly, is somewhere to pour out everything that’s inside me. But I don’t want to. Or maybe, more accurately, right now I simply can’t take on anyone else’s problems.

I remember, a few months ago, a friend wrote to me saying she really wanted to talk — there was drama with her boyfriend, she felt terrible. I told her, of course, I’m here for you — while silently hoping she wouldn’t actually call. I hid. I wondered what I would do if she did call and started pouring her pain out to me, when I had no capacity left to hold it, let alone respond to it. We spoke a month or two later — everything with her had already settled, the crisis had passed — and I felt, if anything, happier about that than she did.

I’ve finally learned to set boundaries, and as much as I want to — out of habit, out of boredom, just to chat with someone — I try to hold back. I don’t know if it’s healthy, or even normal, but for me, if not life-saving, it’s at least mentally saving.

Is this my new self? Will I turn into a closed-off, not particularly friendly person, devoted to hobbies and watching waves and birds? I don’t know. That remains to be discovered. But for now, at least, I know this — I don’t need to feel guilty if someone isn’t happy or satisfied with my choices.