Where do you live, exactly?

About shared space that was never ours

Sometimes it feels almost absurd that you have to explain why you don’t want piles of dog shit in your garden. Why you’d rather not share your fruit with swarms of shit-flies. Why it’s unbearable to be trapped inside a room that reeks of ashtray and heavy dog stench. And yet, that’s exactly what I do in this blog. Not to complain, but to show what it means to live for years without a space of your own without peace, without autonomy, without boundaries that are taken seriously.

This isn’t a story about dog poop. It’s a story about the absence of space. About what happens when your body still tries to warn you, while everything around you has been silent for far too long.

There are moments when you almost stop believing it yourself. When you wonder if maybe you’re the one exaggerating. When you question whether it’s normal to trip over piles of shit, to have flies landing on your food while you try to sit outside, to see your dog refusing to set even one paw in the garden. But what feels even more surreal is the reaction you get when you say something about it.

As if it’s your problem. As if you’re the one who “always has something to complain about.” As if you’re not just asking for a little care, a little space. Not because you want to take something away from anyone, but because this is your living space too. Or rather: it should be. A place where you try to live, though it’s felt like survival for years.

“I’ll tell Floor.” (Buddy does it as well?)
“I don’t mind if they poop here.”
“I’m busy.”
“I live here too.”
“I don’t care if the garden’s full of it.” (I’m the only one maintaining the garden, mom, remember?)

As if that solves anything. As if the fact that you don’t care means it’s perfectly fine for me to grow food surrounded by swarms of feces flies. That Fannar is afraid to go outside. That a tomato plant ends up literally shat on. As if all of this says nothing about the state of our shared environment, and everything about how sensitive I supposedly am…

But it’s not about sensitivity. It’s about respect. About considering each other. And I keep finding that this only seems to matter when it concerns other people’s comfort. When I do something wrong, we need to talk about it. But when it’s your convenience, I’m just supposed to let it go.

It’s not even about the dogs. I’m not saying they’re not allowed to poop. (Although my mother doesn’t make the slightest effort to train them to do it outside.) I’m just saying: take a look. Close the garden door when you head upstairs. Check before you step down the stairs. Small things. But even those seem to be too much to ask.

And when I do say something calmly, without blame, what I get in return sounds like a solution but feels like punishment: “Then I’ll just keep the patio door completely shut from now on.” Not just when she goes upstairs, but even when she leaves the house. Even though she knows that means we’re literally stuck in my room, unable to go downstairs. That we can’t go down until the air has cleared. As if surviving isn’t hard enough, we’re made to pay for even daring to speak up.

And now Fannar is unwell too. All three dogs in the house are sick right now. But unlike my mother, we never have contact with other dogs. We avoid off-leash areas, stay away from crowds, clean Fannar’s muzzle and paws after every walk. Not just out of fear, but out of care, because his stomach is so sensitive.

She’s been walking in the same park for about 34 years now. Four times a day. Her dogs have also been unwell for a while. But the consequences don’t stay with her. Everything circulates through one small shared space. And again, we’re paying the price for someone else’s choices.

As if that wasn’t enough, this place is just filthy. Not “a bit messy.” Really dirty. The couch, where her dogs lie day and night and where countless guest dogs from other people have sprawled over the years is never cleaned. The floor downstairs gets mopped daily, but with a barely functioning vacuum and a mop that just spreads grime around. The kitchen counter is always cluttered. And the air inside is saturated with dog and ashtray.

Upstairs, the hallway is still covered in the old carpet from my childhood; 34 years old, stained so deeply it’s become part of the pattern. It’s never really cleaned, just vacuumed now and then. Yet we walk through it every day. Fannar too. He sniffs, explores, breathes it all in.

And yes, he sniffs Floor’s butt. That’s what dogs do. But when that same dog poops in the garden or house every day, and cleaning is more symbolic than actual, even that becomes a risk.

We’re doing everything we can to keep him safe. Painfully so. He’s only allowed at the foot of our bed. We pet him with gloves on. And yes, we wash him before we go on trips so he can sit close to us, so he can just be touched and loved without fear. But that’s exactly the point: this should never have to be normal.

And then there’s the smell. The smell that lingers long after she’s gone. Because every evening, she smokes indoors at her boyfriend’s place for at least four hours and brings the smoke back with her in her clothes. Everything smells like an ashtray. Like something that should’ve stayed far away but has seeped into everything: into fabric, into furniture and into air. It feels like a symbol for everything that’s piled up here: things never said, things I’d rather be rid of, but that cling to me all the same.
Always.
Everywhere.

Sometimes I think: if we had found our own place earlier, it would never have gotten this bad. Maybe our fear of contamination – our “germ phobia” as they call it, would never have grown this large. Maybe we’d have touched things without scrubbing them first. Without gloves. Without fear. Maybe I would’ve been able to trust my own body, instead of having to constantly shield it from everything that feels unsafe.

But we had no space. My boyfriend did. A small apartment. Safe and clean.  Until my mother manipulated us into driving hundreds of kilometers each week just to see each other. Until it cost him everything. Until he lost that home. Because he made room for me, but there was never room for us.

So we stayed. Here. Among the flies, the smoke, the filth. In an environment where the control I tried to hold onto slowly turned into fear. And the fear into behaviors. And those behaviors into something people call “OCD” or “germ phobia”, but which in truth is nothing more than a cry for help. From someone who never had a space where her boundaries were allowed to exist.

And what’s left, then? A garden that makes me feel unclean. A space where I don’t dare to relax. A house that hasn’t felt like home for years.

And still, I’m the one expected to adjust. To let it go. To show understanding for someone else’s chaos while no one ever asks what it’s like to be in my shoes. What it’s like to stand or work in a garden on a summer day, swarmed by flies drawn to feces. What it’s like to keep swallowing it down instead of screaming. What it’s like to live in a place where your limits simply don’t count.

Because, as she says, “I live here too.” But I’ve been asking myself for years: Where, exactly?