Lyrics: “On My Own” ~ Les Miserables, 1980
Do Not Disturb | The boarding house where I booked an apartment for the weekend comes with a daily cleaning service. I hadn’t noticed that while booking and rather thought they’d only clean / replenish items when asked for. Either way I ran into the cleaning women yesterday when I came back from the cut short hike and that’s always a bit awkward, isn’t it? For me anyway. I’m not used to having rooms and baths etc. cleaned for me. Even though I’ve stayed in hotels where that happens, of course. Maybe the awkwardness stems from actually running into the people while they do it. I know I must sound terribly snobbish here. I’m not, at least I hope I’m not. But to be honest, I’m fine with not having my bed made to perfection even if I’m staying in this room for days. I can and do clean up the basic mess after me in the bathroom anyway and don’t need a proper clean / wipe down every surface for the 3 days I’m staying.
To be honest though the main reason I put up that sign this morning, is because I don’t want to leave the room right now. Nothing invites me to venture out. It’s grey and raining and just yuck! There is no place in the building where I could relocate to while they clean. And I don’t want to relive the awkwardness of yesterday.
On My Own | I don’t mind spending time on my own. I’ve always sort of proudly declared that to other people, e.g. when they wonder how I can go on vacation on my own. And I am in general fine on my own. I don’t need other people to entertain me. To fuss over me. To tell me what to do. For these three days alone I brought a whole bag of books with me for crying out loud. The boarding house got WiFi and I’ve brought various devices to use it on. I had also planned to use this time away to do some “therapy homework”, if I can call it that. To spend some time being introspective. Really think about some stuff. Write it down.
That should come easily to someone who says she’s fine on her own, right? But it doesn’t. At all. The following is not a big epiphany, because I think I’ve always known that about me deep down and just never quite sad it out loud. Because while I might know what to do while being on my own, the “doing” often seems to be a blatant distraction to avoid being alone with my thoughts / in my head. Whether it’s reading or streaming a TV show or editing photos or mindlessly scrolling through my social media; with all those things I can very well avoid thinking about myself.
Because really thinking about yourself can be scary. I really want and more importantly need to do more of that though. I guess it’s a small epiphany after all. Maybe that will help me got to stay in my head a bit more often and not in a bad anxious way, but a constructive introspective one.
Noises | Yes, I know even writing this blog post is some form of distraction too. I need to ease myself into this new kind of introspective way / state of thinking. Other distractions this morning: Looking up stores I could flee to for spending some time outside of this apartment (and my head). But I’m in a small town, there isn’t really much to see. The “mega store” I found at the outskirt is a store selling all kinds of things horse / riding related. Nope, thanks. I also considered writing a long treatise about how and why there are so many cars driving on the street my window is facing, even though the town does have a ring road. And yes, I do know that because I checked on the map, when I started wondering about the traffic. Might be the urban & regional planner in me.
But to bring it back from virtual noises (aka distractions) to drown out my inner thoughts to some real ones: Last night while falling asleep I was woken up from a weird noise. It seemed to come from the hall outside my apartment. My first thought was someone was dragging a stick along a metal fence or grid, because it was some metallic, almost rhythmic sound. Annoying as fuck. When I got up to investigate I realized it wasn’t coming from the hall, but from inside the bathroom. Which baffled and for a moment scared me in my half awake state. There is no metal grid inside the bathroom. I turned on the light, followed the sound and… saw the waterfall shower shower dripping drops on the shower tray. I adjusted the tap again and for good measure also put down the small towel on the tray right below the shower head. But that was a first in either room I’ve ever stayed in.
