Why We Can No Longer Live Here

This is not just about a small room, a lack of privacy, or “a difficult home situation.” It is about living for years in an environment where our bodies never fully relax. About a nervous system that remains constantly alert. About a life that slowly became smaller and smaller, not because we wanted less from life, but because our system kept shutting more and more down in order to survive.

Most people only see that we live with my mother. What they do not see is how deeply a living environment can affect your body, mind, relationship, and daily functioning when there is no real rest, autonomy, or recovery for years on end.

We do not live in a place where we can truly land. We live in a place where we are constantly anticipating.

Sometimes within just a few minutes we hear a train, a scooter, screaming children, an airplane, and a helicopter one after another, while cigarette smoke drifts into the garden and people continue walking behind the house. Even moments that seem quiet never feel completely safe, because our bodies are already bracing for the next interruption.

An Environment Where Our Nervous System Never Fully Relaxes

Our surroundings are filled with constant movement, noise, and human presence.

There are busy roads nearby, a railway line toward Utrecht, low-flying airplanes from Schiphol, scooters, traffic, and almost daily police helicopters over the neighborhood. Even in the garden there is no true silence. Behind the house, people constantly walk past the apartment building, delivery drivers come and go, and there is almost always noise somewhere from music, festivals, parties, or playing children.

The neighboring children scream, cry, and stomp dozens of times a day right beside the garden. Even peaceful moments feel temporary and uncertain. Our bodies never get the chance to fully settle because another stimulus is always coming.

On top of that, cigarette smoke and vape fumes regularly drift into the garden and sometimes even into the house. Fresh air rarely feels truly clean or free here.

Many people underestimate what chronic overstimulation does to a person. But when a nervous system barely gets any real recovery for years, it changes everything: concentration, energy, emotions, creativity, physical tension, sleep, relationships, and eventually even your sense of self.

We are almost always “on.”

Living in Avoidance Instead of Freedom

Besides the physical overstimulation, we have also spent years constantly adapting.

My mother is almost always home. Because of that, we do not move freely through the house, but around her presence. We time when we go to the kitchen or bathroom, avoid spaces, try to prevent tension before it happens, and continuously adjust ourselves throughout the day.

We do not truly live with her. We mostly live beside her while trying to avoid her energy.

That means:
no real privacy,
no autonomy,
no true personal rhythm,
no place where we can completely relax or fully be ourselves.

Even simple things become emotionally loaded when you spend years constantly adjusting yourself to someone else’s presence in the same living space.

Our lives revolve less and less around living, and more and more around avoiding.

What This Environment Has Done to Our Relationship

When we still had our first camper, we at least had movement, freedom, and breathing space. We could leave, walk, be outside, and temporarily escape the tension. After the camper was taken away from us, our lives largely came to a standstill.

Since then, we have spent years living almost continuously together in one small room.

No place to separately decompress.
No room to miss each other.
No environment where spontaneity naturally exists.

Overstimulation makes people more exhausted, emotionally reactive, and shorter with each other. Over time, that created more tension, more irritability, and less lightness between us, even though the core of our relationship was always freedom, nature, quietness, and being on the road together.

Sometimes it feels as though our relationship has spent years trying to survive inside an environment that constantly works against it.

Love needs space to breathe.

This Life Is Not Natural for Fannar Either

Our dog Fannar lives within our limitations too.

Walks are no longer a spontaneous part of daily life, but something that requires planning, preparation, and logistics. Because of that, he sometimes has to hold his needs too long, which affects his sensitive digestion.

There are also frequently other dogs in the house because of dog sitting, constant noise in the environment, and very little real calmness.

We often feel guilty that he has to adapt to a life that does not truly fit his nature.

Being Outside Became Something Rare

One of the most painful things is that nature is no longer part of our daily life, but something we have to fight for.

Often we only truly get outside one or two mornings a week.

To find real peace, we usually need to drive at least an hour, while the car itself has become a major source of stress. It has no inspection approval anymore, meaning every drive carries fear: breakdowns, police checks, costs, or getting stranded.

Even beautiful moments now often begin with stress.

And once we finally arrive somewhere in nature and our bodies slowly begin to relax, the same painful moment always comes eventually: driving back to an environment where we immediately have to switch “on” again.

That hurts.

Especially during spring — our favorite season — it sometimes feels like we are watching life happen behind glass while we remain stuck.

A Body That No Longer Lives Naturally

Our lives mostly consist of sitting, lying down, adapting, and surviving.

Too little movement.
Too little fresh air.
Too little physical activity.
Too little working with our hands.
Too little natural balance between effort and recovery.

As a result, our bodies feel stiffer, more exhausted, and more sensitive than they used to. Not because we do not want to live actively, but because so much of our energy is constantly consumed by overstimulation and survival.

Human beings are not meant to spend years trapped inside one small room without real peace, nature, or freedom.

What We Actually Need

We are not searching for a perfect life.
Not luxury.
Not a big house.

What we are missing is something much more fundamental.

Our own lives.

An environment where our nervous systems no longer have to remain constantly alert. A place where silence is normal. Where fresh air actually feels fresh. Where going outside does not require enormous mental or logistical preparation.

We long for a life where nature becomes part of daily existence again instead of a rare escape.

A place where we can walk, write, film, build, move, and simply exist without constant pressure from noise, tension, and human overstimulation.

More autonomy.
More simplicity.
More space.
More room.

An environment where we can become partners again instead of housemates.
Where Fannar can live more calmly.
Where our bodies can finally recover.
Where creativity can return.
Where the seasons no longer pass us by.

Not because we want “more” than other people, but because we feel how deeply unhealthy and unnatural this life has become for us.

We are not longing for perfection.

Only for a place where we can finally land.