Why Even Peace Exhausts

We drove for three hours in the car one morning. Almost the entire way in darkness. Just to be able to walk somewhere where we would barely run into anyone, just to decompress for a moment.
Along the way we saw so many pieces of land sitting unused. We kept asking ourselves: if there is so little time left for us and so much abandoned land, how is it possible that there seems to be no small corner available for us anywhere, while everywhere there is space just waiting?
When we came home, we wanted nothing more than twenty minutes to breathe. My mother had already left, but we had to wait until she arrived and then opened all the windows and doors. Only then. Only around 15:30 were we finally washed and ready. After that, just a few hours locked inside my room. We waited until she left again, to visit her friend Rick. Only then could Mart get changed and take Fannar outside. The exhaust fumes still hung around the car, but because people kept walking back and forth, we could not leave yet. We had to wait another fifteen minutes, because we always want to be certain no smell of people or traffic lingers around us.
Only around eight o’clock could he walk Fannar for five minutes. And for those five minutes, everything beforehand revolved around it. Mart could not immediately come back inside afterward because of the overstimulation. He had to wait again. And all that time I could do nothing. Just stare out the window. Stay alert. Watch for signals when someone approached. Anticipate. Wait. Control. Afterward he had to clean himself and change clothes.
And meanwhile all I feel is loss. Missing. Grief. This morning I wanted to share a walk with my girl Kaiya. Now even a walk has become a trigger. A memory. There is no room to simply stand still, only suffocation.
What stands out to me, and what I am beginning to realize more and more strongly, is that nothing in our lives happens naturally anymore. Not a single action exists on its own. Everything is built out of intermediate steps and anticipation, avoidance, planning, postponing, adapting and recovering. We are never simply busy with something itself, we are always busy with the space around it. Or more accurately: with the absence of it.
And that is exactly what a nervous system in survival mode does. Everything becomes a risk. Every step has to be controlled. We avoid drafts, sounds, people and eyes. We make movements for safety, not for comfort. And even peace, or perhaps especially peace, exhausts the system. Because peace creates space. And in that space, everything that has been held back for too long rises to the surface: grief, memories, exhaustion and awareness.
Without a stable, quiet place, your system has nowhere to go. It cannot recover. It can only keep enduring. And that is what we have been doing for years. Enduring. Calculating. Tuning out. Scanning. Every hour of every day.
We do go walking sometimes. But even that is surrounded by threat. People make comments when we leave a path to avoid them: that we are disturbing nature, while they themselves walk around loudly wearing perfume, carrying bags full of animal products. We are always watching for police cars. We drive with two route planners at the same time, so we always know where to detour to avoid inspections, fines and the expired vehicle inspection. One wrong move and everything is lost again.
At home we barely see my mother. And still her energy is everywhere. She still controls us, through her rhythm, through her voice and even through her absence. Sometimes she shouts through the window: “See you later, make sure you’re home when I get back.” And then I feel that something is expected from me. Something I cannot always give. She wants care, attention and reassurance. But her behavior is inconsistent. She buys medication, addictive substances, alcohol and “paddo’s” for her sick friend, while she herself says she does not want to live in this world much longer. She asks us to help in the household while she often barely wants to carry her own groceries upstairs. She has no patience, no structure, yet she keeps pulling at us. At me.
And I only want to disappear. Not literally. But disappear from sight. Become invisible. Because being visible means people form opinions about you. Because people tend to judge before they try to understand. Because asking for help seems to invite projection.
Our calls for help are spread across dozens of Facebook groups now. Every day I try to correct distorted images people create of us. And the toxic reactions often convince others faster than the truth does. People call it begging. They say we should “just work.” As if we never tried anything. As if we have only been asking for help for a few weeks, while we have been trapped in survival mode for years. The truth is: nobody wants to live like this. But nobody sees the full picture.
And maybe that is the most painful part. That we are asking for something everyone seems to have: a place. Peace. Freedom. A small corner where we can recover. Yet even that is seen as asking too much.
The only thing I want to say is this: we are not lazy. We are not weak. We are people with nervous systems screaming for safety. And that safety only comes when the environment stops demanding and starts holding.
Thank you if you took the time to read this. That is already more than most people do.