Ploudalmézeau (Finistère, France)
Sometimes my life feels like a perpetual escape. From one place to another, rarely staying longer than four weeks. Always just catching a glimpse, never arriving. Riding on a wave of positive feelings whenever I enjoy something. Within that, variations from happiness to euphoria. But then also sinking into darkness, into variants of gloom.
But there are also other, more subtle and banal forms of escape like distractions through movies and series, books, podcasts, but also with work. It's not that I'm fleeing from negative emotions, because I never succeed at that. When they're there, they have me completely in their grip. I rather flee from thoughts about unpleasant things. Things that evoke feelings of uncertainty in me. In recent days, I've been thinking about this more often because it's occurring again and it feels like I'm going in circles.
It might also be because we've been in the same place for six weeks now and many things have become a kind of habit, a flat state of normality. The weather is a measure; it constantly alternates between light rain and warm sunshine, sometimes lingering with gray skies, an in-between state. The four tides each day are predictable, the beach and dunes no longer a strange place, the quiet a gentle background, never far from absolute silence.
I wouldn't have thought that habituation would set in so quickly here. Here, where I liked it so much from the beginning. So much that I was full of happiness and wanted to stay longer. For a long time even. Forever? I was relieved and full of joy when we were able to extend our stay. From the usual four, we got eight weeks. Six of those have now passed.
Much of what delighted me has become dull. As if it had gone crazy. I still linger at the window when the sun rises or sets and the horizon glows in the most beautiful colors, but it doesn't touch me like it did at the beginning. I still love being at the beach, but I no longer go there every day. A friend once said when he came back from Australia: "You can have seen hundreds of beaches, after a point they're all the same." Did it lost the magic?
Perhaps this is why the concept of vacation works, which an entire industry lives from. People spend their everyday lives in the same place they call home. They have their daily routines. For a few days or weeks a year, they escape to a warm, sunny place. To the mountains or to a beach and are overwhelmed by the new impressions. They are never there too long. Never so long that it becomes a habit. Always just long enough that the dream stays alive and they want to repeat it.
I've been at this point more often. I've only now realized that six weeks is the period when it tips. When infatuation becomes habit. When the dream becomes everyday life. From then on, the view becomes clearer or at least different. For us it's clear, this is not home. Even if I believed at the beginning that it could become that. I can no longer imagine living here permanently. We don't know anyone here, don't speak the language, don't find any connection. Isolation is good and even valuable for a certain time, but it is not a good permanent state.
What I still appreciate most is the quiet. But I've gotten used to this as well. So much so that I hardly notice it anymore. The same goes for the sound of the sea. When I lie in bed in the evening and read something or stand outside on the terrace, I don't hear it anymore. Only when I direct my attention to it do I perceive it again. Yes, habituation is there. And I no longer really know how to deal with it.
Sometimes my life feels like a perpetual escape. From one place to another, rarely staying longer than four weeks. Always just catching a glimpse, never arriving. Riding on a wave of positive feelings whenever I enjoy something. Within that, variations from happiness to euphoria. But then also sinking into darkness, into variants of gloom.
But there are also other, more subtle and banal forms of escape like distractions through movies and series, books, podcasts, but also with work. It's not that I'm fleeing from negative emotions, because I never succeed at that. When they're there, they have me completely in their grip. I rather flee from thoughts about unpleasant things. Things that evoke feelings of uncertainty in me. In recent days, I've been thinking about this more often because it's occurring again and it feels like I'm going in circles.
It might also be because we've been in the same place for six weeks now and many things have become a kind of habit, a flat state of normality. The weather is a measure; it constantly alternates between light rain and warm sunshine, sometimes lingering with gray skies, an in-between state. The four tides each day are predictable, the beach and dunes no longer a strange place, the quiet a gentle background, never far from absolute silence.
I wouldn't have thought that habituation would set in so quickly here. Here, where I liked it so much from the beginning. So much that I was full of happiness and wanted to stay longer. For a long time even. Forever? I was relieved and full of joy when we were able to extend our stay. From the usual four, we got eight weeks. Six of those have now passed.
Much of what delighted me has become dull. As if it had gone crazy. I still linger at the window when the sun rises or sets and the horizon glows in the most beautiful colors, but it doesn't touch me like it did at the beginning. I still love being at the beach, but I no longer go there every day. A friend once said when he came back from Australia: "You can have seen hundreds of beaches, after a point they're all the same." Did it lost the magic?
Perhaps this is why the concept of vacation works, which an entire industry lives from. People spend their everyday lives in the same place they call home. They have their daily routines. For a few days or weeks a year, they escape to a warm, sunny place. To the mountains or to a beach and are overwhelmed by the new impressions. They are never there too long. Never so long that it becomes a habit. Always just long enough that the dream stays alive and they want to repeat it.
I've been at this point more often. I've only now realized that six weeks is the period when it tips. When infatuation becomes habit. When the dream becomes everyday life. From then on, the view becomes clearer or at least different. For us it's clear, this is not home. Even if I believed at the beginning that it could become that. I can no longer imagine living here permanently. We don't know anyone here, don't speak the language, don't find any connection. Isolation is good and even valuable for a certain time, but it is not a good permanent state.
What I still appreciate most is the quiet. But I've gotten used to this as well. So much so that I hardly notice it anymore. The same goes for the sound of the sea. When I lie in bed in the evening and read something or stand outside on the terrace, I don't hear it anymore. Only when I direct my attention to it do I perceive it again. Yes, habituation is there. And I no longer really know how to deal with it.