Sometimes I lay around this foreign house, feeling imprisoned in a completely plain and unthreatening world. The walls, floors, doors, windows of someone’s home – her nest, her escape from the frustrations of the world – for me are transformed into a terrifying black hole that sucks me in without warning. One moment I am fine in this home; doing my best, going through the motions, waking up, watching tv, dressing, going to sleep. The next, I am suddenly caught in a whirlwind of emotions and disclarity where the home becomes my one sworn enemy. Like the worst kind of leader, it has put on a face of familiarity, friendship, gained my trust, only to shatter it.
I lie on a black leather sofa that doubles as my bed in a 16th floor living room. Sometimes, this couch is a comforting place to curl up alone. But then sometimes it suddenly become the only, and completely unsuitable, place for me to weep quietly to myself under the covers while others come and go, talk about trivial troubles like taxes and refinancing. Without a true nest to call my own, the public domain of living room, albeit one that belongs to someone else’s home, becomes my only place of recluse. And the contrast between what this living room is meant for – light-hearted, sociable interactions between the host and her guests – and what I am obliged to use it for – a space for retreat and seek some desperate modicum of private thought and feeling – is simply too great to bear.
It is a troubling feeling when you attempt to retreat from the world and deal with the internal turmoil you may be experiencing in an environment that is not meant to support this kind of life moment! A living room does not a bedroom make. Without the correct environment to deal with emotions that one yearns to experience in solitude, in quiet, the experience is completely unsatisfying. Everyone knows a good cry is sometimes the best medicine. But a good cry is hard to come by when you cannot revel in it; when you are interrupted by comparatively meaningless topics of conversation by people who simply cannot fathom the depth of complexity and conflict you are feeling in every free moment.
This is cool!