Sanctuary and self-destruction

Milly Burroughs
Aug 31, 2018 · 5 min read

I have always taken some solace in the belief that growing up with complex mental health issues at least provides you with an understanding of your own psychological mainframe. While the hand of understanding does not come carrying promise of resolution, it does provide faint illumination in a tunnel so dark it often feels endless. Recently, following a particularly vicious bout of panic, anxiety, suicidal ideation and depression, I found myself in a therapist’s office, desperate to be fixed. I knew what was coming and felt oddly prepared. I felt confident that I could navigate the timeline of my life so far and accurately attribute each and every one of my mental hurdles to a specific moment — all I needed from her was a shopping-list of all the things I needed to do to get better. What I (somewhat arrogantly) wasn’t expecting was for someone who had spent all of 200 minutes with me to tell me something about myself that I hadn’t already worked out. She explained, “We learn how to soothe ourselves from the experience of being soothed by our parents. If a child lacks this experience in being soothed by a parent they are unlikely to develop the ability to self-soothe and may turn to self-destructive habits to find comfort.” At first I was confused, and then I was angry. My whole life I had assumed that nobody could truly “soothe” themselves, and that everyone was reliant on Houdini-esque escape in the form of some existential vice. I had always understood my appetite for self-destruction as an everyday evil, not as a symptom of some psychological inadequacy. Although frustrating and utterly heartbreaking, this felt like a turning point. This was the first time I understood that the vices could be replaced and perhaps, one day, removed.

Quite unbelievably, in more than ten years of design education and observation my curiosity for the psychology of design never collided with my search for sanctuary and escape. Post-therapy I see the concept of home through fresh eyes and in a new role. As a teenager, our house was a cage. I felt trapped in a room designed to protect me and spent every moment of my pubescent years planning or engineering my escape. We surround ourselves with reflections of our mind-set. We swallow whole, in advertising, dating, friendship and popular culture, personalities as refractions our own identities. My bedroom decor existed as an effigy to misfit anxiety — morbid editorial shots shredded and plastered across every surface I could alter. Believing I could only feel sadness and desperation in that space, I sacrificed any chance of positive influence in the hope of finding solidarity in the faces of tragedy and personal misdemeanour.

Around 18 things begin to change. You are an adult. You must be an adult. For some, like myself, that’s being packed off to university, for others it’s looking at a future and taking steps in a responsible direction. When you consider the variables involved, it’s obscene that we all have the burden of adulthood thrust upon us at the same point in our lives. When it comes to self-expression through home things can be tricky. Based on personal experience, you use your most likely rented abode as a social vision board, rather than the sanctuary it could be. Guests are often new friends or fleeting acquaintances, and you are keen, almost anxious, for them to leave with a taste of your blooming persona on their tongue. Once detached from family we find ourselves forging new relationships. We reinforce the value of the inner circle and the profundity of those bonds by mirroring the photo-frames of the family home, adorning our walls with out-of-focus disposable camera shots and memorabilia from wild excursions. Nothing is more important than showcasing the ring of social protection that surrounds you — everything else is of secondary importance.

With confidence, a fistful of established relationships and a more secure sense of self comes style, and with that comes a pride in projecting a stylised personal narrative onto the spaces around you. The monotony of an office is punctured by personal touches that reflect their owners and homes become precious vessels for incubating our identity. While this instills a sense of pride and healthy maintenance of home, it also provides an opportunity to feel threatened. Following four years of delicate romance, I invited my boyfriend to move in with me. Having always turned to him in time of trauma, I believed his evergreen presence would bring me only more comfort, but the reality was something else. It was pointed out to me that I would need to make space for his things, something I hadn’t particularly considered. Suddenly I felt threatened. This bubble of self-indulgence I had so carefully curated around myself was being prodded by a dull pin. After he moved in the pressure only mounted. I found myself feeling claustrophobic and irritated. Surrounded by reminders of spacial compromise and catastrophizing every instance of his possessions challenging ownership of surfaces in my space. We lasted five months. By the end of April he was gone, the challenge of co-existence sunk its roots into the already fractured bedrock of our love. With great relief, his possessions weren’t far behind him, although every extra second they remained in my room felt like cruel reminder of time and energy lost over a failed domestic partnership.

While heartbreak is brutal, and domestic separation is only fuel to a white hot fire, with absence comes reflection and, this time, for the first time, with reflection came resolution. As I mentally chastised myself for allowing my singular sanctuary to be threatened, I felt the urge to redefine my surroundings. Four months down the line, I have created what to many people looks exactly like what I had pre-invasion, but in my mind it is something else. Before living with someone, my room was a chamber of isolation — something I always found intimidating and only ever strived to escape. To be alone was to be lonely. Now I thrive on my solitary existence. Suddenly, I have something that soothes me. Not drugs, not alcohol, not the breathless skin-on-skin release of an emotionless union, but a space in which I can take pleasure in being only with myself.

Milly Burroughs
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