Grieving Places

I have always assumed degrees of attachment to physical places and environments differ from person to person. Being neurodivergent, the signals of safety (or otherwise) and familiarity (or otherwise) from the space around me can play a large part in how I’m feeling, thinking and functioning. I’ve watched various people leave homes, offices, third-spaces and never think of them again. In a way, I’m envious.

Places are anchors.

I’m home, no one can introduce things I don’t expect. The local supermarket (a common autistic regulation place, I’m led to believe) - I know where things are. I know where the things I like are.

I know how it feels to be in a certain office, a certain staff room of a school, a relative’s home.

When these places change, or become somewhere I can no longer go - there is grief. Something that helped shape my world has become something else and I have lost it.

I’m moving home tomorrow for the first time in over 11 years. Although at times desperate to move, I’ve avoided it for at least half of those years. Even with its faults, it’s a sanctuary that cannot be replicated anywhere else. However comforting my next main place is, it can’t comfort in the same way, because it isn’t the same.

For a short while I will be anchor-less. Unmoored, I’ll likely take refuge in other places that I am used to. Supermarkets, coffee shops - the people, shelves, tastes, smells and sounds that soothe only because it isn’t the first time I’m there.

Logically, I know my new home will provide as a sanctuary soon enough. It will change me in slight ways because of how it is. How the light moves through it on a normal day. What noises are common to hear. The people in the other houses on the street that I sense, or talk to. They will all start to have an effect on where my attention goes.

Nick Cave talks about us as creatures of loss. Acceptance of that is a loss in and of itself. Losing people, places, thoughts - it happens all the time. I think I’m finally ready to lose this shell for a new one.