The Failed Escape

About living in a world without an exit.
This is not a story about one night, nor only about fireworks. It is the story of what it means to spend years living in an environment that is too loud, too crowded, too unpredictable and too lacking in protection for a sensitive body, for an anxious dog and for two people constantly trying to create enough space simply to exist as they are. It is the story of a failed escape, but above all of everything that becomes visible when escaping no longer seems possible, when the system begins to falter, when bodies start giving signals and when the line between “holding on” and “not being able to carry it anymore” grows thinner
It has now been two weeks since we were supposed to leave to escape New Year’s Eve, and in truth this story does not begin with the night itself, but earlier, in the weeks when fireworks here no longer appear as isolated moments but as a constant background noise returning every single day, as if the streets are slowly preparing for a war that everyone seems to consider normal, except those who cannot withstand it.
We have lived for years in an environment where peace is not something natural, but something that constantly has to be organized between screaming children, stomping mothers, moving apartment residents, renovations outside and the endless noise of highways, but in this case also between unexpected explosions, shouting voices, flashes in the dark and a constant alertness that never truly switches off. For our dog Fannar, this is not “noise”, not festivity, not tradition, but a direct threat to his nervous system, his body and his sense of safety, because he cannot understand where the explosions come from, cannot choose to go somewhere else and cannot decide that it is safe, leaving his body knowing only how to disappear, freeze and hide.
We had known for a long time that we had to leave this year. Not because we wanted to, not because it sounded enjoyable, but because staying was simply no longer an option, not for Fannar and honestly not for us anymore either. We had no grand plans, no luxury, no holiday park in mind, but were searching for a quiet place where we could stay with a tent, a few nights during which his nervous system would not constantly have to remain on guard and where Fannar would not have to gather his entire body together every time an unexpected bang happened simply to survive it.
There was someone helping us named Inge, someone who without big words and without needing explanations created enough room to make that escape possible, allowing us to pick up an almost new tent, a power bank and an air pump. No comfort, but the conditions to simply exist somewhere outside the place where we have already been stuck for so long.
And still, it did not happen.
My phone completely died on New Year’s Eve because of a known motherboard issue with this model, not slowly, not partially, but entirely, and in one moment our only line to the outside world disappeared, to safety, to navigation, to information, to creativity and to everything still connecting us to the world, including contact with my mother and grandmother, which meant the money intended to literally get us away from the explosions instead had to be used to buy parts and attempt to repair my still older phone ourselves, something we never wanted, but could not avoid because a phone is our only access to the outside world. We unfortunately later discovered that my old phone was completely beyond repair as well, meaning we now somehow have to find a refurbished phone in another way…
The tent had to be returned and so, for the sixth year in a row, we could not leave during New Year’s Eve, remaining here not because we wanted to, but because we had nowhere else to go.
Even before the actual turn of the year, before we were supposed to leave, Fannar already had two firework-related experiences that pulled his sense of safety even further away and showed us once again how thin the line here is between “tense” and “dangerous”.
The first time was on an evening when a small group of boys was sitting near the apartment behind the house where my mother lives and at first it simply seemed like some hanging around, until shortly before we left they suddenly lit heavy fireworks very quickly, precisely at the moment we had our window wide open. The explosions entered without warning, the flashes reflected against the walls and we all startled, while Fannar crawled away, as if his body already knew what was still to come.
The second experience, the one that affected us even more deeply, happened on New Year’s Eve itself. We had taken Fannar for a walk to tire him out before we had originally planned to leave, hoping he might perhaps find a little more peace that evening, and when we returned and were sitting in the car waiting for the house to be ventilated because my mother had left for my grandmother’s place, we saw a large group of teenagers approaching from the street, behaving like hooligans, loud, shouting and carrying fireworks in their hands, already throwing them around while walking, making it immediately feel intimidating not only for us, but apparently for other neighbors too, who briefly came outside to look and then quickly fled back indoors.
I jumped out of the car, threw open the back door for Fannar and we ran inside, while Mart stayed in the car to prevent them from slashing our tires, our only real means of escape from here. Inside I shut the front door and all the windows as quickly as possible, but within seconds Fannar was already on top of my mother’s bed, his entire body frozen in fear, and I found him tucked tightly beneath it.
Outside the group had meanwhile occupied the entire width of the road and both sidewalks, leaving Mart literally trapped in the middle, and although he himself is not easily frightened, he still felt the threat of saying anything to them, afraid they would later return to damage our car, our only possible escape route.
I could not contain myself and pressed my middle finger against the kitchen window, but the group did not even notice.
Once the actual turn of the year arrived, we were already far beyond our limits, not only because of everything that had happened in the days before, but because of the realization that there was nowhere left to go, that the tent was being returned, that our escape route had disappeared and that we therefore once again had to prepare ourselves for a night we already knew would intensify everything that had already become too much.
In our street fireworks were not merely present, they were everywhere, and although they were officially banned throughout the city, young boys from the street, who have lived here their entire lives and therefore know perfectly well that dogs live here, still continued, even at moments when they were literally standing in front of our door and beside our car setting off explosions, as if the space where we live and try to survive held absolutely no meaning.
Fannar sat upstairs panting, his body stiff with fear, not knowing where else he could still hide himself, and at one point, after a large firework battery was set off in front of the door, Mart opened the front door to tell them they did not need to fight, not to start an argument, but because we no longer saw any other way to protect our dog.
A little later I saw the police driving by and I stopped them, something I normally can barely imagine myself doing because I never go out into the street, especially not among other people, and while I stood there surrounded by fireworks and perfume, overwhelmed by the noise, wearing only a stained sweater and no trousers, I noticed how visibly different I had become, how within just a few meters from my mother’s front door I already felt as though I no longer belonged anywhere.
I also carry a deep distance toward the police, and that did not arise from distrust alone but from years in which our old camper was structurally treated as a problem, as something that did not fit and therefore had to disappear, while those same structures now seem unable to respond to genuinely dangerous behavior, such as people illegally setting off fireworks directly in front of our door and where even a still-smoking firework battery apparently is not enough to speak of “caught in the act”.
The boys had long since fled indoors and although the officers stood next to the still-smoking battery, they said they could only act if they literally caught someone in the act, that they did not want to wait and that I simply had to stay calm, after which I had to return inside carrying a body full of fear, overstimulation and exhaustion while the explosions simply continued.
It made me feel how arbitrary safety apparently is, how much protection depends on whether you live in the right form, within the right structures, fit inside the right frameworks and are visible in the right way, and how little space exists for sensitive bodies, for people who cannot keep up with the speed and self-evidence of society, and for animals who have no words to say their boundaries have already been crossed long ago.
And so we were trapped once again, for the sixth year in a row, in a street too loud, too unsafe and too unpredictable to live in with a sensitive body and an anxious dog.
The days after the turn of the year did not feel like “afterwards”, but like an extension of what had already become too much, as if the tension did not subside but merely shifted into different layers of a life that perhaps once still offered some stability, but which has now started collapsing piece by piece.
One of the first things to disappear was our groceries. Albert Heijn canceled our delivery because of the weather forecast, and while other people could simply walk or drive to a store, we suddenly found ourselves facing a wall, because for nearly five years now we have no longer entered stores and are therefore completely dependent on deliveries, making the question suddenly no longer what we would eat, but whether we could get food at all.
Then came the next cancellation. And with it the reality that we could not “quickly fix something”, but that we are literally trapped inside a system functioning only as long as you fit within society’s standard movements.
During those same days it also became clear how complicated our access to actual food truly was. My grandmother’s other daughter, who came with her husband in a large car to bring groceries because my grandmother could no longer walk her daily round, brought nothing for us and the only way we might perhaps have been able to receive something was by pretending the groceries were actually for my grandmother, something that crossed a line for me. Because of that we eventually became dependent on a neighbor with stage-4 cancer, who did receive grocery deliveries and with whom we were allowed to order things occasionally. My mother and her boyfriend also brought things along sometimes, but she needed recognition and validation for that all day long, as if caring were a competition instead of simply something you do.
At the same time snow arrived, a lot of snow, which on one side completely muffled the sound of the highways and train tracks, but on the other side made everything even more overwhelming because suddenly every day people were shoveling paths through the garden for my mother and her dog buggy with iron snow shovels, creating enormous noise, and this happened precisely during the same period in which we normally need all our energy simply to organize our own necessary things outside our room, causing everything to become twice as difficult and twice as heavy again without any extra room existing anywhere. Every footstep in the alley beside the house sounded through the snow as if people were walking directly inside our room. And naturally we also felt a kind of “fear of missing out”: ideally we too would want to play outside every day…
So we built a kind of fort for Fannar in the garden so he could at least still play with his ball, and only when I made a photo for my grandmother and Mart looked at mine, did I suddenly feel reminded again that we are a couple and not merely two housemates spending every minute of the day troubleshooting, planning, coordinating and searching for a place in this world where we are allowed to exist as we are.
What happens during this period does not stay outside us. It settles into our bodies, our sleep, our muscles, the way we wake up and the way we try to get through the days, as if our nervous system has for years already been in a state meant only for brief moments of danger, but where there now no longer seems to be any way out.
Our mattress, far too soft and the place where we spend so many hours every day, has started causing physical complaints I never had before: back pain extending into dizziness and balance issues in the mornings, as if my body itself is now trying to tell me this way of living can no longer be carried. The constant overstimulation, the interrupted nights, the lack of real recovery moments, everything keeps piling up inside a body that no longer finds any space to release tension.
Fannar carries this in his body too. He seems to constantly have stomach pain and repeatedly gets into trouble because he wants to eat downstairs where my mother’s dogs also eat, causing him to repeatedly receive things he actually can no longer tolerate, while his body has been showing for years that everything has become too much. His anxiety is visible not only in his behavior, but also in his digestion, his tension and his constant alertness.
As if the turn of the year and the days afterward were not enough already, in the weeks that followed new layers kept being added which may seem small from the outside, but which once again showed us how little room we actually have to recover.
Lately Fannar constantly wants to mount Floor, my mother’s dog, something pitiful for Floor but almost unbearable for us too because it so clearly shows how much tension sits inside him and how much unrest he can barely process anymore. At the same time we barely dare pet him without gloves because the house we live in feels so dirty that even giving love has become a threshold. My mother cleans very poorly, she only vacuums every day and wipes endlessly, while more and more shopping bags, which we find dirty anyway because they come from other and therefore unknown households, are allowed to pile up in the garden without ever being fully cleaned, causing dirt from feces and urine to be walked inside continuously. It makes us feel as though we live in an environment that is not only overstimulating, but also unhygienic, and where even simple things like petting your own dog no longer feel natural…
And then something else happened that perhaps hit the hardest emotionally: we discovered there are mice and droppings inside our camper. Everywhere, above the cupboards, there are droppings, and the insulation material can be seen sticking out through the heater and the pipes into the interior, as if even our final escape route is slowly being taken away by something we cannot control. It felt as though the ground beneath us disappeared once again, because that camper is not simply a vehicle, but the only tangible symbol of a future outside this room, and now it feels further away than ever.
It hurts even more because we have been through this before. Our previous camper eventually became unusable because of mice and rats, precisely during the period in which we were only allowed to park it beside a very dirty ditch before it was towed away, a place where we had absolutely no control over what happened to it. The memory of that still lives fresh inside our bodies and seeing new droppings, new traces and new destruction feels like reliving a trauma that was never truly finished.
Now we are even further removed from leaving here, because first we have to somehow catch the mice, close the holes and completely clean the camper again, something that was already difficult enough the first time without running water, without electricity and with only one moment each week during which we can even work on it at all. The prospect of having to do all of that again, during a winter already too heavy, feels almost impossible, while at the same time knowing there is no other road if we ever still want to leave.
And meanwhile daily life here simply continues. The tension inside the house, the constant stimuli, the lack of real privacy, the feeling that even our smallest basic needs are no longer in our own hands. Everything accumulates and while other people perhaps simply have a bad week, for us it feels as though every new setback attaches itself to all the previous ones until it becomes difficult to tell where one burden ends and the next begins.
And perhaps that is the most painful thing of all: that this is not merely a story about circumstances, but about bodies slowly learning to live in a state originally meant only for escaping, not for inhabiting. About a nervous system forced to fight too long without any prospect of real rest, about a dog who has no safe place left to land, and about two people repeatedly trying to remain human within conditions that make that increasingly difficult.
What is written here is not a chain of isolated moments of bad luck, but a glimpse into what a life looks like when there are too few safety nets and too many things collapsing at once. It is not only about fireworks, not only about a broken phone, not only about mice in a camper or a house that does not feel safe, but about how all these layers together create an existence in which recovery is given almost no room anymore.
I am not sharing this to ask for pity, but to make visible what usually remains invisible. Not everyone lives in circumstances where problems are easy to solve, where help appears naturally or where peace restores itself automatically. Sometimes small things pile themselves onto something already larger than one person, one dog and one relationship can carry.
What we are searching for is not luxury and not an extraordinary solution, but something more basic: a place where our nervous systems can finally calm down, where Fannar no longer has to freeze from fear, where hygiene is not a daily battle and where our future is no longer continuously consumed by circumstances we have no control over.
Until then we keep doing what we have already been doing for years: trying step by step to remain standing, hoping that one day there will once again be a place where staying is actually possible.