Notes on distance: The impact of enforced and voluntary seclusion

Up until a year ago, had I been told that I would have to stay put in my home for an indefinite period, I probably would have sighed with relief. Having no plans or reason to see anyone would have been welcome anywhere between the ages of 15 to 21. Seclusion in what I perceived as the safety of my room was something that I had become accustomed to. It wasn’t a punishment or a mandatory obligation. I just never felt able to do otherwise.

When I reflect on my mid-teens to early twenties, I can’t smile in reminiscence of days and nights of juvenile frivolity. Instead, I feel a deep sense of loss and remorse. I see a girl crying as she undergoes ritualistic body surveillance in her full-length mirror. I feel her shame. I feel her grief. I see the mental lists she used to make of things she would instantly change about herself had she the power. I see the four walls of my bedroom - the four walls I face right now as I write this.

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I can only describe this discomfort by likening it to a continuous background noise, like the low hum of hotel air conditioning

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My life during those years felt fairly stagnant. Most of my days ran into each other, and I had resigned myself to feeling lonely and listless. I, of course, experienced much joy, happiness and friendship within that period, but those moments felt brief and contaminated by an underlying yet enduring sense of sadness and unease. I can only describe this discomfort by likening it to a continuous background noise, like the low hum of hotel air conditioning, and I didn’t realise it was there until it stopped, and when it did stop, I felt immense relief.

It has only been in the last year that this discomfort has started to abate somewhat. At the end of a summer dictated by the same self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviours as usual, I moved to France for a year as part of my studies. I don’t remember feeling much prior to the move, and whether this was anxiety dulling my senses on purpose or just pure apathy, I’m not quite sure, but I figure it was probably an interchanging mix of both. The thought of moving abroad wasn’t one my brain could even begin to conceptualise. I found it hard to imagine myself in any scenario outside of my comfort zone without feeling my chest tighten, but the move was obligatory, so I would clench my fists, grit my teeth and get on with it.

Now hear me out, I am a firm believer that no matter where you go, you take your brain with you, so please know that I am in no way no implying that by moving abroad, you will experience some kind of immaculate rebirth. For me personally, creating distance between myself and my home environment gave me the space I needed to start some kind of healing process. I was granted a new perspective that allowed me to see myself bare, but not to scrutinise and berate. I was able to observe all of the habitual thought and behavioural patterns that I had harboured for so long in a more objective way. I could see how harmful these patterns were - it was as if they didn’t fit me and my new environment anymore and so I could start disidentifying with them. For the first time, I began to feel safe and at peace in my skin. For the first time, I truly felt at home.

Sadly, my time abroad was cut short due to the coronavirus outbreak earlier this year, and it has now been over 5 months since I moved back to my hometown. Being back home has been strange. Time here has felt both static and fluid. The days have passed quickly but they have still felt long. I’ve had moments where my heart has felt light and it’s been easy to smile, but I have had more where I have felt flat and withdrawn. Some days it feels as though I’m back in my pre-Erasmus body, stuck in old cycles of negative patterns that I thought I had triumphed over, but evidently have not.

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A lot of home environments are much too nuanced and complex to be placed on a ‘good vs bad’ or ‘healthy vs toxic’ binary

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I can say with sincere gratitude that my home is a very safe place for me to be. However, I do think that a lot of home environments are much too nuanced and complex to be placed on a “good vs bad” or “healthy vs toxic” binary. Each household harbours years and years of residual pain, all relative to the members who live there and everyone’s pain is contagious. It’s the way households are. It’s the way people are. Life is just hard, and people are complicated. Yes, I have felt safe, sheltered, loved and accepted here, but this is also a place where I have felt profound loneliness, alienation and grief. It is a place that I have come to associate with stagnancy, and this negative association has been further exasperated by the comparison I have naturally made with my positive experience of home abroad.

In a way, I almost feel like I’m grieving the person I was a few months back. I’ve become slightly preoccupied with wanting to feel like her again. I want to feel her stillness and contentedness so desperately. I want to feel at home. But I am learning that comparing yourself to yourself can be just as harmful as pitting yourself against others. Every day I have to remind myself that healing is not linear and that all feelings and stages of life are transient - which is both good and bad news. I’m trying to look back at who I was and see her as a reminder of the peace and joy that I alone can create for myself - rather than mourn her. I still have her eyes, her compassion, her values, her determination and her fight. I still am her. It’s just a little hard for me to see and hear her at the moment.