There’s no space left. Not outside. Not within me.

There are moments when your body takes over; not to whisper gently, but to scream, as a last resort, after all earlier signals have been ignored time and time again.
This is the story of weeks filled with noise, disruption, dog feces, imposed structures, and the constant loss of control – a slow build-up that ultimately ended in a double migraine attack. Not as a surprise, but as the direct result of a life that has been sustained too long in an environment that never stops, no matter how many times you try to say: this is too much.

My mother’s garden, which once offered a tiny bit of space to breathe, hasn’t felt like ours in a long time.
Every single day there’s dog poop from her dogs, not tucked away in a corner, but right in the middle of the garden, even on top of the spot where I grow my food. I’ve literally found it on a tomato plant.
Flies crawl all over it and then move on to the blackberries, the grapes, the plants I’ve cared for with so much patience and love. She never fully cleans it up.

Even Fannar, who normally bounds toward everything with excitement, now prefers to lie against the sliding door, or won’t even come into the garden at all. Even when we throw his favourite ball outside, he won’t go after it. Not because he doesn’t feel like it, but because everything in him senses that the garden no longer belongs to him, or to us.

On top of that, the neighbours’ garden door is almost always open. Their two young children talk, cry, run through the house, or drive toy cars over the laminate floor from early morning until late at night. Our walls are thin, the ceiling vibrates. Every sound comes in. And that’s on top of the noise we already live with.

The playground on the field next to the garden was recently renovated. New goalposts were placed, and with them came more children, more screaming, more running around. It’s as if the only bit of outdoor space that used to hold moments of silence has now also been fully claimed by noise and movement.
And if that wasn’t enough, a permanent mimic game was burned into the pavement directly behind my mother’s garden.
Stickers, designed for playing children, as if it’s completely normal that everyone must constantly adapt to their energy, their noise, their presence. As if silence has become suspicious.
Several times a day, groups of kids come running right past the garden, from the front of mum’s to the back with bouncing balls, screaming nonstop, before continuing to play football even louder next to here.

And then there’s the flat. The longest in the country. It looms right behind us. There’s always something going on there. People moving in or out, renovations, shouting, hammering. For weeks now, they’ve been painting the upper floor and for the last two days, they’ve been working directly above our heads. We hear everything. There’s not a single moment of rest. Not even in the air above us. And this kind of construction worker? They like to watch. Into gardens, at people, at dogs. They comment if Fannar barks, which he’s been doing a lot more lately, simply because of the sheer overload of stimuli.

Two days after our camper broke down along the highway -the very same camper we had hoped would offer us just a few nights of peace- my body gave in.
The first migraine came after a walk, while I was in the car. My vision partially disappeared, the headache started, the nausea kicked in. I still thought it might pass. But at home, the second wave hit. And that one was devastating.

It began with that blinding aura. Then came the pounding pain. Then the nausea. The vomiting. But it didn’t stop there: tingling lips, a feverish flush, a heart that kept racing faster and faster. Everything spiraled out of control.
My body couldn’t take it anymore. My nervous system crashed.

I spent hours just lying there. I couldn’t move. And when I did try to rest, I couldn’t. The neighbours a bit further down were back at it again with hammering, sawing, drilling. Everything echoed through the walls. Everything just… continued.

Even when your body shuts down, the world doesn’t stop.

My mother doesn’t see me. But that’s been the case for years.
We live above her, yet there’s no contact. No presence. No closeness.
During the attack, she did send a message asking how I was. Not cold, not indifferent, but also not truly there. She says nothing about my exhaustion, about the sensory overload, about the way my boundaries are crossed every single day.

Only when it concerns her own behaviour -her dogs constantly pooping in the garden, the lack of cleaning, the nuisance it causes- then there’s a reaction.
Suddenly it’s “that’s just how it is,” or “they’re traumatized.”
Everything gets pushed outside herself. Meanwhile, she refuses to change anything about how she lives with her dogs; nothing that might help them feel safe enough to relieve themselves elsewhere.

And perhaps what makes all of this the hardest, is that it takes so much time, money, and energy to simply live the way human beings are meant to live: Quietly. In connection with nature. Without constant intrusions on your body, your senses, your rhythm.

We live frugally. Consciously. Minimally. We don’t ask for much.
And yet it feels like we’re fighting a battle we cannot win.
As if the system was deliberately designed to push people like us: people who refuse to participate in the rushed, noisy, overstimulating world, further and further to the edges.
As if freedom is something that can only be bought.
As if rest has become a privilege instead of a basic human need.

Why is it so impossibly hard to find something that should be so simple? Why is a quiet, free, simple life so damn out of reach?

My body had been whispering it for months. Now it screamed.

But the world doesn’t listen. So this boundary, too, was crossed.