How Small a Life Can Become

Yesterday we received a message from our neighbour. Their bathroom is being renovated yet again, and for that they will need a construction container. They wanted to know whether we would be willing to give up our parking space for a few weeks so the container could be placed in front of their house.

It wasn’t an unfriendly message, yet it stayed with me for the rest of the night, not only because of the request itself, but because I was once again confronted with something I have been struggling with for years: how difficult it is to explain what certain things really mean when people only see the visible part of the story. Moments like these keep reminding me how large the gap is between how our life looks from the outside and what it actually feels like to live it.

For most people, a parking space is just a parking space. If it’s temporarily unavailable, you park somewhere else. Maybe you walk a few extra minutes. Maybe it’s a little inconvenient. Then life goes on.

For us, it has never been just a parking space. That spot is in front of the house where I grew up and where, at almost forty years old, I still live. Not because that was ever my dream, but because life sometimes takes a direction you never saw coming, and before you know it, years have passed while you’re trying to fight your way back to something that other people take for granted.

That is where our old car waits when we finally find a morning during which we have gathered enough energy, enough courage and enough calm to go for a walk. That is where we return when, unfortunately, it’s time to come home again. Because the distance between the car and the front door is as short as possible, the threshold to leave the house feels just a little less overwhelming on days when even the smallest extra obstacle can make the difference between doing something and not doing it at all.

What our neighbour sees is a car parked outside. What he doesn’t see is that this car is connected to almost every attempt we still make to keep our lives livable. That coming home costs a little less energy on days when my nervous system is already overwhelmed. That we can see the car from inside the house, something that may sound excessive to many people, but which is tied to experiences you don’t simply forget, such as having vehicles sabotaged by someone slashing tyres or cutting through a charging cable.

And perhaps even more importantly, it was the last place we had when we brought our girl Kaatje home for the final time after she had spent her last minutes in that car. Afterwards, the car remained parked in that exact spot for almost an entire year.

People often think things like this are exaggerated. That a few extra metres of walking can’t possibly matter that much. That surely you can park somewhere else for a few weeks. That surely you can tolerate a little more noise for a while. That surely you can be flexible.

But if our lives were that flexible, we probably wouldn’t still be here.

If we could simply do without things for a few weeks, our lives would probably have looked very different by now. We wouldn’t be dependent on that one walk a week that we spend days looking forward to. We wouldn’t constantly be calculating the sensory cost of everything we do. Coming home wouldn’t be part of the equation. The distance between a parking space and a front door wouldn’t be something I think about at all. Rest wouldn’t be something I’ve been longing for, for years.

As I thought about it, I realised it wasn’t really about the parking space at all. What affected me most was something else entirely: the ease with which some people can think in terms of “a few weeks.”

A few weeks without a parking space.

A few weeks with a container outside.

A few weeks of extra noise.

A few weeks of disruption.

I think people who have enough space in their lives often don’t realise how many of these so-called temporary inconveniences are absorbed by the space they already have. A house of their own. A quiet room. A garden. A place to retreat. The financial means to get away for a while. A life in which a setback doesn’t immediately collide with twenty other vulnerabilities.

We don’t have that space. We don’t have a spare room to retreat to when construction starts outside. We don’t have a holiday home to escape to when the disruption becomes too much. We don’t have a buffer that allows something unpleasant to remain merely unpleasant instead of spreading into ten different parts of our lives.

My thoughts drifted further back. To a time when the world still felt bigger. To our first camper. To the freedom we briefly tasted before it was taken away from us again. To the days when we travelled with a rooftop tent and, for the last time in my life, I felt as though the horizon stretched beyond the limits of our daily existence.

Since 2013, we have watched several neighbours come and go. Almost every move brought new construction work, renovations, vans, containers, noise and weeks during which the street once again became a place you couldn’t escape from. During all those years, there were also young children living next door, creating a constant stream of noise, movement and activity in an environment that was already difficult enough for us to cope with. We have never renovated a bathroom. Never built an extension. Never installed a new kitchen. Never carried out major renovations.

While things around us were constantly being improved, upgraded or replaced, we were occupied with something far more fundamental: trying to find enough peace and quiet. Trying to keep our lives livable. Trying not to fall apart.

For most people, a construction container is just temporary street furniture. For me, it means weeks of additional noise. Metal slamming shut. Rubble and waste being thrown inside. More activity outside the front door. One more piece of peace disappearing from an environment where peace has already been scarce for years.

So this isn’t really about this renovation alone. It’s about what happens when twelve years of moves, renovations, noise, changes and disruptions pile up in a life that already has very little space left to absorb them.

What saddens me most is that moments like these keep reminding me how many years have already passed. While one neighbour renovates a bathroom for the third or fourth time, we are still trying to build a life that other people take for granted. While others make plans for renovations, holidays, extensions or new furniture, we are still trying to achieve something much more basic: a place where we can rest. A place where we can spend the night without constantly being on alert. A place where we don’t have to think about noise, smells, conflict, expectations and sensory overload every single day.

Perhaps that is why a message like this stirs up so much more than it should on paper. Because it reminds me how different people’s starting points can be.

For one person, a bathroom is a project.

For another, peace and quiet are still a dream.

For one person, a parking space is a practical detail.

For another, it is part of a carefully constructed route that makes it possible to leave the house at all.

For one person, two or three weeks are temporary.

For another, two or three weeks are enough to push an already exhausted nervous system even further beyond its limits, with recovery taking longer than the disruption itself.

Sometimes I think people don’t realise how much a person can lose without any of it being visible. When someone loses a job, everybody sees it. When someone loses a home, most people understand that too. But when someone slowly loses their freedom, piece by piece, year after year, without there ever being one dramatic moment that everybody witnesses, almost nobody seems to notice.

People still see a car. Still see a walk. Still see two people occasionally posting a photo of a forest path or their beloved dog.
What they don’t see is how much preparation is required before that walk can even happen. How much recovery comes before and after it. How small a life can gradually become when you spend years trying to function in an environment that doesn’t fit who you are.

Perhaps that is why the message affected me so deeply. Not only because of the parking space. Not only because of the container. Not even because of the renovation itself.

But because of the contrast. The contrast between people who can renovate a bathroom for the third or fourth time in twelve years and two people who have spent years trying to create a place where they can finally rest.

The contrast between a temporary inconvenience and a situation that has lasted so long that I sometimes no longer remember what it feels like to live somewhere without constantly taking noise, smells, expectations, tensions and sensory overload into account. The contrast between people who think in terms of weeks and people who have long since started thinking in terms of years.

Because perhaps that is what hurts the most. Not only that there will soon be a container outside. Not only that there will be drilling and construction work. Not only that there will be even more noise in a street that is already rarely quiet. But the realisation that the years continue to pass regardless. That we are heading into yet another summer in which our lives are almost entirely shaped by circumstances we did not choose. That more weeks will slip away and never return. Weeks in which we grow older. Weeks in which dreams must once again be postponed. Weeks in which we try, once again, to hold on until some kind of opening appears.

And perhaps that is why the message has stayed with me. Because our greatest problem has never been a lack of perseverance, a lack of good intentions, or a lack of dreams. It has been a lack of space. A kind of space that is so natural and abundant for many people that they hardly notice it exists, while for us it has felt, for years now, like the most valuable thing in the world.