It’s been a ride

Dearest readers,

If it weren’t for our phones and watches, we wouldn’t have really known that the season “winter” is on our doorstep. Sure, the very few trees behind the paved garden have started to let go of their old, colorful leaves for a month now and the temperature has dropped, but we’re not really experiencing it anymore, like we used to in the olden days. We would spend hundreds of euros monthly (most of our social income) on driving about 50KM everyday to spend over half a day in the sort of (manmade) nature that’s left in our little country. Just to be, as nature intended for us humans. We would hike, eat, sometimes even sort of work and play. Until late June ’21…

It started as an escape from the house where I grew up in and always lived in. We were so so unhappy living with others with whom we didn’t want to live (anymore), in a big city where there’s never no sound or smell (autism/hsp and migraine) and where you can’t see the sun rise and set. After a while we started to appreciate nature even more and above all, we saw the joy that it gave our fur babies.
We knew that we had to live in nature permanently.
A house nearby nature is not really possible in this country and besides, after mother was scared that I would leave her for many years which prevented me from doing so, the housing market simply plummeted. I could only get an appartement in my very own city with my 15+ years of registration, let alone a normal house, let alone nearby nature in another place.
We came to the conclusion that we had to have a little home on wheels. Thus, we could also visit mother now and then. It would also give us the opportunity to not only stay, but to also leave a place as soon as it got busier.
So we bought an old van on wheels with money we technically didn’t have in August 2018. Having an old van in our case meant “repairing” it almost every day ourselves, as the real problem couldn’t be found by different kinds of mechanics for quite some time. This wasn’t ideal on the road and every time we wanted to go to a neighbor country, just over the border, mother got a bit anxious and it would take ages for us to be able to really leave for a few weeks. This resulted in us finally giving up in December, as these wet cold months weren’t too inviting either in an old van with no heater and many dogs.
Technically we were homeless from then on. Yes we had a house to live in, so we definitely weren’t houseless and we still had the van parked in the neighbourhood where we would love to spend our time having lunch in and do very short trips with, but surely when you’re both in your 30’s, you’re entitled to live your own lives, together…? The house I used to feel at home at very much so, now only felt like a place to survive. An in-betweener… For the many more years to come, as it turned out……. Until this very day….
After 6 months, almost summer 2019, my younger brother would finally leave to live on his own. This meant a bit less stimulations, as he would phone his friends and game and watch TV until deep into the night.
Fall 2020. One of the worst days of our lives, thus far. They took our very last piece of freedom and privacy. They took our home on wheels, after it had been parked next to a gutter full of rats that had also entered and damaged our van, which was already heartbreaking. No houses nearby. And even though we had been able to buy a car a few months earlier to have our daily walks in nature with, it wasn’t like a home.
We had parked the van EVERYWHERE where other people with often more luxurious vans who’d also have a house of their own, would park theirs, but only OURS would receive a fine, after still unknown (!) neighbours would literally look for it and call the rozzers and pretend it was bothering them. I don’t doubt it was the same person who had also punctured our tyres and cut through the charger cable that would have killed (!) my man, had he not seen it in time.
We’ve tried everything to get it back, we contacted our govt, political parties and even our alderman. They all promised to look further into it and seem to be understanding, until COVID hit and we never heard back from anyone……
And boy did COVID hit hard. Not the disease itself: we couldn’t get it as we hardly ever were around other people, but its USELESS, shameless unnecessary rules and regulations did. Isolating wasn’t a problem for us, as we’ve always lived withdrawn and pretty isolated, but the fact that A: people started going to the very little nature that’s left here which meant our peaceful-ish places weren’t so peaceful anymore and B: they closed quite a few of our “happy places”, which also included the borders to Germany. My man used to live 1 km away from the German border and our very special happy place was literally a few km into Germany. We would go there every month or so to feel as happy and free as we possibly could. But not anymore. They also shut beaches that were our furbabies’ happy places and thus ours as well. And nothing is more painful than not being able to tell your babies that their happy days were over… Our germaphobia would also become much worse than it already had been pre COVID and all that combined made us all very very very unhappy and we reflected this onto our babies and I’ve regretted NOTHING more than that… because….
Early summer ’21. When we didn’t think our hearts could be shattered once more, it broke into a million more pieces and that continued until this very day, every day repeatedly. Losing our home, our freedom, nature, our only hope was NOTHING compared to losing a part of your little family. THE most important part. The one who was the most loved by me for over 15 years and frankly was the reason I still believed life was TOTALLY worth it…