On Nostalgia

The funny thing about feeling you're on the outside is how much you long to be back there.

Although we moved out of the house I grew up in when I was 16, most of my dreams took place there for at least a decade afterwards. We'd be in the kitchen, or the big garden that hugged the back and side of the house, an adventure ground of flower beds, curved walkways, the little pond, and the lawn where we'd play football around mum's daffodils.

Still now, nearly another decade later, my dreams are very often populated by my two brothers and my sister, and sometimes my parents, even though I've lived in another country to all of them for a good while . My unconscious is clearly very busy with them. There, we're still a little crew, negotiating often-tricky situations together.

In my waking life, thinking back to the years together in that house is one of the surest routes to a wave of nostalgia so heavy it atually hurts. If i let mysef give in to it, my chest gets sucked down to the pit of my stomach, a crushing feeling of something being ripped away. My throat closes in, and the energy saps out of me. I wish I could go back to being our little unit, the four gang members held together by the attention of our parents.

The thing is, though, when I see them today, I don't know how to be. I frequently become silent and awkward, stiffening up when asked a question, answering monosyllabically with an air of annoyance. I'm somehow unable to open up, caught in an illogical bind of being convinced they don't really care, while at the same time uncomfortable that they're so interested, as if opening up would be too risky, too vulnerable. I don't want to play that board-game, I don't want any wine thanks, I don't mind what we eat, there's nothing in particular I want to do, except maybe go for a run by myself. I seem to try to negate any needs I might have, to negate my presence. Don't worry, I'll be gone soon.

It takes me a while to relax into beng with them, if i get there at all.

Nostalgia is surely directly proportional to how much you can manage to let yourself in to the fullness of the present moment, and to connect with the people and things around you. I'm not so good at being close to the people around me.

Even as a kid, where the longing directs itself, I spent large amounts of time searching out spaces of my own, hiding in the attic with intricate jigsaw puzzles and my dad's anatomy books, reading alone in the room at the end of the house curled up in a ball in an armchair, or suddenly wandering off down the garden in the middle of a game of football or cricket with my brothers. I kept on trying to be separate. And yet the thought of the childhood years brings on its first taste the warm glow of being a close crew.

The idea of being really connected is wonderful when I locate it in the past, but in the present tense it makes me nervous. Whenever I leave my family after a visit, I invariably feel incredibly sad that I'm not with them, even though while there I spend a lot of time feeling on the outside, and hurt and annoyed that they're putting me there. I've done enough therapy to know that I put myself on the outside all by myself, and finally, finally, it might have got through to my scared little brain that I am not being rejected, and that they do actually want me there.

Sometimes feeling accepted is almost more painful than being on the outside. A fullness, a relief, an intensity I'm not used to. Nostalgia is so comfortable in comparison. A longing for connection, love, acceptance, whatever, without any of the dangers that could actually come from those things. I'll probably always need to retreat and be alone, but I'm trying to join in. I want to be part of it.

The Brown Leather Sofa

It began with carrying a dark brown leather sofa up to the third floor, one Sunday morning in spring, 2012. I’d found it right outside my flat, and my two flatmates didn’t mind, and even helped me carry it up. In Berlin, seeing furniture left out on the street is a daily occurrence, as is seeing an impressive array of it being transported by foot or bike. I’ve seen a man carrying a bed frame across the huge park that used to be the city airport, and people cycling while balancing bookcases, chairs, lamps, and alarmingly large suitcases.

Of course, most people have carried furniture through the streets at some point, marking the phase when you don’t have enough money or stuff to warrant paying someone with a van. As a Ph.D. student, I’d wheeled a blue sofa through Cambridge, but that was when I was living in University accommodation, and nothing was permanent. Perhaps that should have been over by my late-20s, but after moving countries, I found myself doing the same thing again. When I first arrived in Berlin in the fall of 2010, I came with just a suitcase and a big backpack. It was only when I lugged the brown sofa up the stairs that I finally started an uncertain momentum towards a fragile sense of belonging.

I’m looking at the sofa now, crumpled creases shining in the late-afternoon light as I sit in a black leather and metal chair that one of those flatmates didn’t want anymore. We all moved out in the summer, and I managed to get a lease on my own place for the first time. I’m not sure where he is now, but the chair squats low and wide, with narrow armrests, and is possibly quite ugly, but it’s half-covered in a blanket. That came from a bodywork studio I worked in here a few years ago, and is one of the ones we covered clients with when they’d rest after sessions. I wonder if it’s creepy to have brought the blanket home after we closed that studio, but it’s a lovely, soft, blueish green.

I had come to Berlin for a one-year history research position, but then made the leap of beginning a course in somatic therapy. The training lasted almost four years, during which I slowly set myself up, working with people on their anxieties and stresses. It’s a fulfilling job once they find their way to me, but establishing your own client-based business in a new city as a fairly introverted and not very business-savvy person is a mammoth task. I joined the ranks of the precarious freelancers and part-timers that fill Berlin.

It’s never been clear how long I was going to stay here. Berlin is full of people finding their own paths and doing things differently, and I guess I was the same. There’s another chair opposite me, a strange construction that would probably identify itself as a desk chair, but is actually much too uncomfortable to sit on for very long. It came from a feminist NGO that I volunteered with here for a year. I’m not surprised they wanted rid of it; the NGO operated with a flat democratic structure, which involved hours of discussions, fueled by crisps and chocolate, and tinged with frustration and passive aggression, and for that you really need comfortable chairs. It’s quite striking, its pale, wicker-effect back panel framed in black wood with rounded edges, but it doesn’t really fit next to the table.

With its thin, spindly legs and deep red wood, the table is not robust enough to feel like a desk, but is too narrow for a dining table. It came from one of the flea markets here that are jammed full of people on Sundays. In my early years, I developed a fetish for the delicate, old teacups that I found there, and now have a proud collection of azure blue, poppy red, grass green and lemon yellow, each one patterned with gold. They make a delightful way to drink the morning espresso that I transferred to from my English filter coffee.

As I gradually collected objects, I didn’t imagine I’d leave, but then I didn’t imagine far ahead at all, even though the few friends I made in my first years kept leaving. To my left, now, is the red chest of drawers that used to belong to a friend from my research institute before he moved away. After the fourth friend packed up, I started to feel more wary about who I’d become close to, but you never really know. People try things out here.

On my right side is a huge white bookcase that made its way here via another freelancer friend, who stayed at my flat for nine months while contemplating where he’d like to live, and while I tried out living in a communal house with my then-girlfriend. When that all ended and I came back, I got the bookcase. It’s the kind that no-one would actually find pleasing to look at, but which holds so much stuff that it can mostly get away unnoticed. The house was one of Berlin’s “project houses”, effectively collectively owned by the sixty-odd people who lived in it, who made all of the decisions about it together. Like the NGO, this involved long discussions, inside and outside of meetings. There was always a conflict or problem to be picked apart, and most people seemed to exist within a blend of feeling tired and annoyed, but resolved to carry on.

I’ve been determined about something during my time in Berlin, pressing ahead as if I needed to prove something. I’m not really cut out for freelance life, but I stubbornly pushed forwards, focused on keeping my head above water. I tried immersing myself in a football team and a touch rugby team, I explored the queer scene, and I dived into the world of spoken word, finding my feet and my voice on stage. Whatever I did, it came with a kind of urgency, as if I needed to find my place. I’m an expert at feeling like I’m not quite good enough, and don’t quite belong, and as though I need to try very hard to keep everything together.

Looking back at all this feels like having stepped off a football pitch after the end of a tough game. Sometimes after a match, I can’t really remember what happened at all. I’ve been so focused on running, on watching the ball and people’s movements, and anticipating where they will go next, and afterwards it all seems like one big blur. Except that I’m still here, on the pitch, looking around at the jumbled furniture that has clustered around me. By now, I don’t feel so much like I need to prove anything. I feel comfortable. I do fit in. Now that I’ve realized those things, I’m free to leave.

As I sit in my flat, I’m surrounded by my little world of familiar objects, but they make a strange mixture. It’s the first time I’ve owned all of the objects in a place, but they seem as if they’ve blown in with the wind. The sofa was the start of my first attempt at my own home, and I am thankful for it, but I’ll finally be leaving Berlin soon, and I’ll probably leave all of it for some other people to collect on their journeys. I’ll just be taking my colorful teacups, and making a different attempt at belonging.