Even a Walk Becomes a Risk

Life Without Margin #3
“Don’t make such a big deal out of it.” Large gestures and a middle finger waved right in front of my face. It was early. Far too early. The evening before I had already wanted to discuss what time we would get up and how we would handle the morning, but as always, by then we were both exhausted from the day. And I think that is exactly the problem: if we do not discuss things the night before, there comes a point where I simply cannot handle it anymore. At four in the morning, half an hour before we might need to get up, I do not want to suddenly have that conversation. Once that happens, I cannot find calm again. So for me, the evening before feels like the only option. But Mart does not want to talk about it then. As if my need for clarity feels like pressure to him, while for me it is the only way to create some sense of calm. And so we keep colliding at exactly that point: I try to gain control by thinking ahead, while he reacts as if every attempt at structure takes something away from him. He felt I was criticising him because I once again explained that we really need to leave much earlier if we want to be home by 7:30, before my mother gets up. The past few weeks we had kept returning around 9:30 and that had not been good for either of us. We barely had time to clean everything, prepare the ingredients for a smoothie, and then I would still spend a long time making breakfast while my body needed rest much earlier. At the same time, I also do not want to return to how things were two years ago, when we spent years waking up around 3:30 just to leave before 7:30. Neither of us actually wants that anymore: planning every aspect of life around survival. But in our situation it often still feels necessary. And what I still do not understand is why he becomes explosive when I try to apply logic to something that stopped feeling logical a long time ago. Waking up twenty minutes earlier is not going to magically turn arriving home at 9:30 into arriving home at 7:30. That simply does not add up. Why can he not acknowledge how early we already used to wake up just to make any of this work at all? I notice that my mind keeps searching for something that makes sense, while his reaction often makes everything feel even more unpredictable. And maybe that is exactly where we clash: I try to create calm by thinking ahead, while he tries to preserve calm by refusing to think about it at all. I checked the weather and the water levels and suggested that maybe we could go to Lek after visiting the camper, so we would not have to rush home before 7:30 or 9:30 but could simply return around one in the afternoon while my mother would still be gone for hours. That immediately felt calmer to me. I notice I do this more often lately: when two options both feel impossible, I start searching for a third. Not because I am naturally flexible, but because staying trapped between the other two starts to feel unbearable. We decided to do that and it turned out to be a good choice. It was nice, even though it was extremely crowded in a place where we normally never see anyone. Fannar was happy. And in the end, that is what matters. So first we went to the camper again, continuing the cleanup after the mouse infestation. And there we discovered it was even worse than we thought. Not just the cupboards, not just the benches, not just the wardrobe and the bed; they had also reached the supplies stored in the camper itself. It felt as if everything we had done the previous times had only pushed them further inside. In the final cupboard almost every package of drinks had been chewed open. When I picked one up, everything spilled out again. At the bottom there was a thick layer of half-dried vegan chocolate milk and mould. In that same cupboard were also the camper’s papers: the only small remaining piece of hope we still had, the idea that maybe we could one day sell it after it was no longer impounded and after we had fully cleaned it, was basically gone. The papers were barely readable anymore. Later, when we walked back to the car, something happened that we have feared for years. Someone had called the police because we were standing near a car wearing plastic gloves. Our car. We only wore them because we had been cleaning and because of contamination fears, but apparently for someone that was enough reason to call emergency services. Somewhere I understand how people think: anything they do not understand quickly becomes suspicious. But that does not make it any less absurd to suddenly find yourself inside that suspicion. People around us usually think we look kind and harmless. Fannar looks cute. But as people now know, we have always been deeply afraid of attracting attention, partly because our car has no inspection and partly because it stands out in every possible way: too much clutter, a damaged rear bumper, and a green colour in a world where nearly every car is white, black or grey. Earlier that day we had already seen both a police car and a police motorcycle, so we were already tense. When Mart looked in the mirror and saw them turn around, he immediately whispered: “I’m never doing this again.” What he meant was: going outside on Sundays. Because one way or another, there are always more complaints then. He kept driving until suddenly everything happened at once: flashing lights, high beams and the sign telling us to stop. We pulled over at the top of a driveway. And then suddenly an older man stood next to my window, and something in his posture immediately revealed that he truly came from the complaints department. I lowered the window slightly because I panic when someone stands too close. But when he began speaking, he sounded different from every previous encounter we have had with authorities. Softer. Less superior. Less suspicious and all-knowing. Almost laughing, he explained that they had received a report about “people walking around a car with plastic gloves.” “We thought maybe something strange was happening because there were dogs being let out there,” he said. He already knew the car belonged to Mart because he had looked up the name on the registration photo. He also asked me whether I lived at the same address. He saw a pile of takeaway containers in the car and asked whether we had just cleaned out the house or had been camping. I explained we had been cleaning and that was fine. “Take care, I won’t bother you any further. Have a good day.” Younger officers, who arrived later, apparently had been standing further away and had already looked up information in databases in the meantime, but he himself had simply been in the area and decided to stop us because it was busy near the Lekdijk. We drove away and tried to create distance as inconspicuously as possible because they seemed to be taking the same route. There were almost no turnoffs, so it took a long time before we reached a residential area. Luckily another car ended up between us and they never followed us in. The tension stayed in my body the entire drive home, not only because something had happened, but because my mind kept searching for what else might still come: was it really over, or would something happen later? Had they continued checking things after we left? And above all: why does someone immediately call emergency services without first even looking at what is happening? Why not simply wait a moment and see that we opened the car with a key? Or did someone genuinely create an entire story in their mind in which we were doing something criminal? Can people apparently only think from their own frame of reference, where plastic gloves automatically belong to something illegal? Maybe that is the hardest part: not even what happened, but how quickly other people fill in what is not there. Today it has been two days later. Mart tries not to think about it anymore, while I write everything down. Every detail. Trying to understand what happened and why. As if by replaying it all I can somehow regain control over something that already happened. We both experienced a huge amount of stress, both that day and the night afterwards. Many dreams. And the tension is still in his body. Maybe that is the hardest part about living without margin. Not only that what happens feels heavy, but how long it keeps lingering afterwards. And how even something as simple as going outside never really becomes just going outside anymore. Without margin, everything becomes a risk.