Rootless people

Hello dear readers,

I wanted to write a piece on a subject I often ponder about. About people like myself who keeps having a sense of rootlessness no matter where they go.

Sometimes people tell me it is because I am at a certain age where my body wants to start making babies and sometimes people say it is because I became an expat that I feel this way. So, I would like to say straight away that feeling rootless is something I have had since I was a child, it did not come to me with time and biology and thus the baby theory can be thrown out the window.

As for the other suggestion; it might be right that to some extent the distance from where I come from and my family has made me distance myself even more from that aspect of life. Surely though, if I was close to my family and had rooting and lots of good memories from my home-town I would have felt the need to go back there and start a life there instead of in the middle of Europe where I am now? You see, I cannot remember ever feeling connected to the place I grew up. Yes there are good memories as well, and yes I have a certain connection with my siblings and family, yet it is not the type of close connection I would like to have with them. That I need find elsewhere and to some extent I find it in good friends. When I moved away from home and then abroad I developed and became this new version of myself. The wings were really ready to fly and I was ready to experience what was beyond the mountains and valleys of Norway. It was then I found the friends and sort of attachment I now have to the Netherlands and England. I would not go as far as to call it rooted yet though. There is always something missing, what other people have with their families. A sense of belonging to someone, which I have yet to feel. 

This can stem from the time I was a kid and went through some awful things on a daily basis either at school or at home or both. It was circumstance partly that made things pan out the way they did and I have found a place for these things in my mind, yet in the big picture...this very circumstance and the very knowledge that anything can crush your plans makes me feel there is little point in feeling too comfy anywhere.

Insecurity and to some extent controlling emotional distress is a big part of making me feel so rootless I suppose. Looking back I was always looking for the emergency exit metaphorically and actually. To know I could get away from anything or anyone who tried to pin me down and make me do something I did not want to do was a big part of searching for escape. I do think a lot of people feel restless or rootless because of similar traumatic events, insecurity is not necessarily so visible for everyone else but for us it has a grip that forces us to not get to attached to anything. If something seems too good to be true, we have learned it usually is too good to be true.

I guess what I often ponder about is if one has come to this state of mind, is there any way to reverse it? Or will it always be like this? That I look for the emergency exit even in my good old days? I have a few friends who share this feeling, who are scared of being ¨trapped¨ again by circumstance and not be able to get out of it. It might not be a very severe fear, yet it is always there and it makes you question every decision you make. This is why sometimes I try not to think about every single decision I make, just a quick and hasty and rash decision is sometimes better to avoid the wave of questions that my insecure side would like to know the answers to to make the new exit....

The good part of having this type of view in life is that you adapt rather quick to the outside world. The bad side is you seem unreadable and unreliable to some. You also loose people on the way because of the fear drivers you have got whipping your brain when things take a new turn.

From this rootless person to the next, I think everyone has their stories which affect them one way or the other. For us it may be this, for others it may be something else. There is no such thing as an ideal person, you can at the very least hold onto moments that make you happy and let go of the worst case scenarios now and then. Trust me it helps. Seeing friends and hiking and doing sports it helps! Distracting the mind is sometimes the best way to deal with what is chewing at your grey matter. 

Keep strong, 

xx Viking