I live in a tent

I live in a tent.

No, really. I live in a tent.

A tent that has secret conversations with the wind and affairs with every passing storm. She’s always messed up after those. And so am I.

A tent whose insides are refuge for me, while its outsides are refuge for stories (and bugs. So. Many. Fucking. Bugs).

I’ve been living this way for almost five months now. Life circumstances made sure that I ended up here.

It wasn’t my only option, no. But I’m someone who values my peace too much and, to me, living inside four walls made of fabric feels more peaceful than living with people that aren’t aligned with me.

I could tell the whole story of how I ended up here. How I broke up with my toxic ex and was left with nothing. How my mother isn’t a suitable person to live with. How I refuse to get a traditional job to pay rent. But that’s not what this is about.

I used to live a comfortable life. Not luxurious, just comfortable.

I was kind of a housewife, had a bed that felt like sleeping on clouds, a beautiful view from a very high apartment, and every source of entertainment I could ask for.

I was miserable.

I’d cook and clean, feed the dogs, do laundry, and spend the whole day waiting for that sweet moment where I could sit in front of a screen to play videogames and pretend for a little while that I was fine with it. That I was fine with life having no heavier meaning than finishing your tasks to play games.

I was living for someone else, a life that I chose and that I hated. And I couldn’t understand why

I grew up believing that all I needed to be happy was comfort. Comfort that came from money. So when I had the opportunity to live comfortably, I held onto it, not willing to let go. But I wasn’t happy. So I started asking myself: if comfort doesn’t make me happy, what does?

I woke up one day in the tent, two weeks or so into living in it. I could hear the birds chirping outside. I could see the sun leaking into the tent through the small patches where the fabric is close to giving up. I could smell wet grass after a light rain had caressed my shelter while I was sleeping.

Peacefully. Uncomfortably. Authentically.

And I found myself wondering, again. How could I feel so good when I had been stripped of all modern comforts?

It certainly isn’t because I live in a tent. It’s not easy at all, as mystical as it may sound.

As I’m writing this I can see a giant wasp building its house on the tent. Right on the door. The bugs don’t even respect me.

There are also rollie pollies building what I can only assume is some kind of cult around the base. They appear to be dancing. I am both their landlord and their hostage.

I don’t wake up enlightened. I wake up cold and itchy, knowing something just crawled over my feet and I can’t do shit about it.

There are spiders waiting for an opportunity to throw a party under my bed. A mudroom? What’s that? I have no space to cook and eat a proper dinner. I have no electricity.

I have nothing but myself. (And bugs).

And when you have nothing but yourself for long enough, you start realizing there isn’t much more that you need. At least that was the case for me.

There are days where I wake up thinking: you absolute idiot, you could be sleeping in a real bed right now, and wonder if this was a bad decision. It may be. There’s a reason why we evolved from little shelters built with animal skin to concrete houses, after all.

But the truth is that the way I’m feeling has nothing to do with the kind of structure I’m living in. It’s about the things I found out about myself when I had nothing to do but spend time with myself. When I had nothing to help me escape reality but the depths of my imagination.

I started living a more relaxed life. A more boring one as well. But boring is good.

Boredom is what forces us—or me—to get creative. To look around and wonder what you can do to stop feeling that way. I’d normally grab my phone and start mindlessly scrolling through social media, but that’s not an option when you don’t have Wi-Fi.

It’s no wonder I started writing again. My mind was producing all these little stories to keep me entertained until they stopped being stories and started being little truths about myself.

Staring at a snail just existing and crawling to nowhere, inventing stories about it getting late to work, became wondering about my own existence.

And that was when it hit me. It’s not that the minimalism that comes from living in a tent made me an enlightened being. It’s that when the outside noise quietened enough, I could finally actually hear myself. What I wanted, what I didn’t like, what I desired.

Nothing spectacular was happening outside, so I made something spectacular happen inside: quiet alignment.

Living in a tent is not the magical spiritual retreat I might be making it sound like. It’s uncomfortable. It’s hard. I want to run away sometimes and give up on my dream of living a more peaceful life away from societal expectations.

I could have discovered these things about myself in a more convenient way, but that wasn’t the case. And in whatever way it could have happened, I’d be just as happy about it.

If I ever get the chance to live a comfortable life again, I’m sure I will take it. I might lose myself again to the luxuries modern life offers us. I’m just human, after all. But knowing I have the tools now to center myself when I feel like I need it, without the discomfort, is ironically quite comforting.

So what makes me happy? I don’t fully know. Maybe being close to nature. Maybe being close to myself. Maybe the peace of having no schedule. But I do know what makes me miserable now. Not comfort, and not the lack of it, but living a life I wasn’t meant to live.

The tent doesn’t fix me. It just doesn’t lie to me.

And if that means sleeping under thin fabric, arguing with wasps, and sharing custody of the floor with rollie pollies… so be it.