Learned behavior

I now live in a house. It’s not big. It’s not small. It’s a good sized starter home. We didn’t have furniture so I spent the first week sleeping on a mattress in the living room. Now the sleeping has gravitated to the bedroom finally. Every room has its uses.

I feel odd.

Like something isn’t quite right.

I wanted to panic when I first felt this way. Wondering why, wondering if I’d made another mistake.

Then I realised I was out of my comfort zone. Most of my life has been spent in a room. It’s how I protect myself. As a youngster, my room was my refuge. It wasn’t much of a refuge once my mum took the door away, but curled up in my bed I felt the world could go away.

For the most part, I did everything in bed. I slept, ate, studied, worked, entertained, chilled, watched TV… One year I had a 2 bedroom flat, but I slept in the living room eventually. Unable and unwilling to be an adult at that time. Queue a string of shared houses with just one room to live out of, peppered with short stays at the houses of both my parents. I had a brief hiatus when I moved in with my ex, but it transpired I moved in with him entirely because of what he could offer me rather than any love or attraction on a personal level. Because I was deeply unhappy, I associated the house with my unhappiness. My depression. My uncertainty. I began to spend more time in bed, regressing back to some earlier stage in my life when the world wasnt so intense.

So it comes as no surprise that I am finding it tough to get used to a house again. I don’t have much experience with such space.