My home for now
When I was a child, I used to live in a bubble.
We had no words for it back then, neither me, my parents or society, but I guess you can call it a hypersensitive’s survival mechanism in a world filled with too many stimuli. For years I walked on tiptoe, literally: the soles of my feet never touching the ground. The world was a harsh place filled with too many sounds and smells and things that felt rough to the touch. I was much rather living up in my head, having endless conversations with imaginary friends, or diving into a drawing or a story. The physical world was a décor to my musings, not in any way my nurturing soil.
Growing up, settling into this life and growing more confident about it, I gradually began to embrace the physical world as a place where I could in fact grow roots and feel at ease. My bubble dissolved, ever so slowly, until I found that I could connect to people, objects, nature and the feel of particular surroundings in order to anchor myself.
Over the last decade I have felt this intermediary stage shift again, and I can now say in all honesty that I can root within myself, connect to the world, and take the changing elements as they come. Some of them will feel pleasant, others toxic. I will know them for what they are, decide what to do about them, and move on from there.
It’s only two or three years ago that I came across the term hypersensitive as a means to describe a certain type of person for the very first time. I thought: interesting, but this isn’t me. I was the dreamer child, the artist, the elven spirit who didn’t quite belong in this solid, materialistic world. That was all there was to it, wasn’t it?
In fact, a lot of the typical characteristics attributed to hypersensitives correspond with what and who I am. I have come to realize that my childhood bubble was a very efficient protection mechanism. If I wasn’t quite part of the world, the world couldn’t overwhelm me.
Only as I settled into adulthood, and into a more mature way of dealing with whatever was thrown my way, I came to realize just how much I was taking in all the time.
All in all, I feel I have struck good bargain in life. As a child, although I wasn’t always feeling great, I had a loving and supportive family, and I was allowed to live inside my bubble. As a rooted adult, I find I am much more capable of dealing with all these things that would have completely freaked me out as a child.
They don’t anymore, even though I am now much more aware of them than I ever was before. But now I am also capable of taking my needs into account, and actively creating a balance that works for me.
Very often, I don’t have to subject myself to experiences that feel like ordeals anymore. I am free to say no.
I find my holiday experiences have changed, too.
As a kid, trying to flee from reality in any way I could, I would read stacks of books during any holiday.
Now, reading and writing for a living, I just want to empty myself completely and disappear into the silence of my sensory experience.
Not any kind of experience, though. My heightened insight in my own sensitivities has made me ever less prone to mingle with crowds or endure noisy, unpleasant places (even if a lot of people actually find these same places charming). I am ever more fleeing the flock. I often don’t even need music in the car anymore, not even on hour-long drives.
There is a quietness that has settled within me, at some deep level. And the more I come into my own, the more I am drawn to empty, sometimes even uncompromising landscapes.
I enjoy the hillsides like we had them at Montefiori dell’Aso, but mainly for the sense of space and horizon they bring. All the while, I am secretly longing for the mountains.
The Grand Sasso pass that we crossed yesterday was a place of such empty space and such austere beauty that I felt all the noise in my head finally — finally — quiet down.
I got out of the car to take a few pictures, and then I sat down on an outcrop of rock, in the late afternoon sunlight, and drank in the land.
I felt I could have grown roots right on the spot, digging into that rough soil, drinking its dry, slightly bitter nectar.
The old bones of the earth, unyielding, uncompromised, unpromising. No need to prove or do anything, just the pure and simple fact of breathing and being, aligned to the pulse of the living land.
Let this be my home for now.
No place better.
