Where Recovery Ends

The past week and a half did not feel like a series of separate events, but like a space slowly closing in. As if everything that was still somewhat predictable here simultaneously decided to shift. Streetlights that after weeks are suddenly being replaced exactly next to the house, something that in the forty years I have lived here has never happened before. Apartment doors being sanded and painted, day after day, for weeks, in places where that had never happened before. Construction work in the same apartment, noises in the neighbouring buildings continuing. Open fireplaces burning incorrectly and a smell lingering in the air that your body immediately recognizes as wrong, even when the windows are barely open. And a week later they suddenly open the pavement with four vans, an excavator and a large container, removing all the bushes we had only just begun to feel somewhat sheltered by.
It is not one stimulus. It is the disappearance of stability.
And on top of that the smaller things, which only seem small when you look at them separately. An air freshener that made my body feel almost instantly ill. Nausea, a sort of half-poisoned feeling. My mother removed it immediately when I said something, but even then it says enough that something like that could stand here at all, in a house where my system has already been on edge for so long. More daycare dogs and also staying longer. More smell, more sound, more unpredictability. More presence where there is no space left for it.
And in the middle of all that, Fannar.
Fannar who cannot truly settle anywhere. Downstairs there is tension, anger, hormones and correction. Upstairs there is waiting. Always waiting. Waiting for another daycare dog to arrive. Waiting until he can go to Floor again. And when he is not downstairs with us, we continue correcting him upstairs too, because he reacts to smell, to skin oil and to all those daycare dogs lying there; things we ourselves can barely tolerate anymore because everything has already become too much. It is as if he lives in constant anticipation, never in relaxation. And I see myself doing the same.
What I also increasingly see, and what I have perhaps been seeing for months, maybe even years, is that Fannar never truly comes to rest as long as my mother is in the house. Her walking back and forth, doors, movement, noise directed at her dogs… He stays alert. Upright. Following. Waiting. He only truly lies down once she is gone. As if his body only then gets permission to release tension.
That image perhaps affects me most of all. Because it shows that this is not about one incident, or a few busy weeks, but about a long-term state of vigilance. For him. And honestly for us too.
It is difficult to explain how heartbreaking it feels to see a dog adapt for so long to an environment that never grants him rest. Not through something overtly cruel or dramatic, but through a continuous unrest that never stops. As if safety has become something temporary.
As if rest always remains just out of reach. Sometimes I notice thoughts entering my mind that I do not actually want to have. Thoughts that do not come from distance, but from care. Thoughts in which I ask myself whether this life, this place, this constant tension, is still truly fair to Fannar. Thoughts in which I briefly think about another little home for him, not because I want to lose him, but because I see how he cannot truly land here anywhere. It is a thought that hurts deeply, because it touches everything we wanted to carry together. And at the same time it says everything about how high the level of need has become.
What intensifies all of this is something so mundane you almost do not dare mention it: our mattress. This mattress has caused us more and more physical complaints. Constant pain, no matter how we sit or lie down. Back, shoulders, knees and even dizzy spells. Arms and legs falling asleep. No position that still feels right. The mattress is not old, but it is far too soft. Never intended to be used twenty hours a day. It has become wavy. Sunken in.
Our bodies noticed earlier than our minds did.
What affects me is how clear this all actually is. This is not “just sleeping badly”. This is a body receiving no recovery anymore. No single place where tension can drop. Everything remains switched on. Always. And because of that everything enters harder: the noise, the smell, movement, the presence of others and the smallest disturbance. Not because I have become weaker, but because my system no longer has anywhere left to settle.
Between Mart and me this also creates friction. Not out of unwillingness, but because we experience time differently. He has lived for years with the idea that we are leaving any moment now. That it is temporary. That space will come later. But I see how quickly the years have passed. Fannar will turn eight this year. Eleven and a half years ago Mart lost his home in 2018, and there has not been a real foundation since. In 2020 our little house on wheels was taken from us after we had barely had it for two years. In 2021 we lost our little girl. For a while everything stood still, but since 2023 the urgency has become greater than ever.
Time turns out to behave differently than you hope.
What I feel is not drama, exaggeration or weakness. It is a body saying: this is too much. No space, no real rest and no recovery means holding on no longer happens suddenly, but slowly. In sleep, in muscles, in nerves and in relationships. That mattress has become a symbol of that. Not because it is the biggest problem, but because it shows how far beyond our limits we already are. How long we have kept thinking: it will pass. Just a little longer. Soon.
But bodies believe in tension.
I am not writing this to ask for pity. I am writing this because honesty is sometimes the first form of care. Because acknowledging something does not have to mean giving up. Because continuing to endure circumstances that do not allow recovery eventually also becomes a choice: one the body no longer wants to carry.