At Home With Solitude by Tillie Holmes
Images by Julia Wrzesinska
This year, home has started to feel more familiar.
Familiar isn’t always a good thing, mind, and living with four other people quickly shed light on that fact. For example, I’m now more familiar with 90’s hip hop than I ever wanted to be thanks to one housemate who ‘creates beats’ until four in the morning, and I’m far too accustomed to the soundtrack of Gilmore Girls, which plays on a loop in our house from sun-up to sun-down. I’ve seen more pairs of discarded pants than I care to admit, grown used to the grind of sand under my feet on the kitchen floor, and walked into the flaccid corpse of my housemate’s wetsuit enough times to flinch instinctively upon entering the bathroom.
No, familiar isn’t always a good thing. It can be claustrophobic. It’s easy to feel at home when you’re allowed to leave; it’s harder when your every-day turns into your EVERY frickin’ DAY.
Image by Julia Wrzesinska
I used to think of ‘home’ as the place where I kept my comfort; the place where my books lived, where the corner of the sofa was moulded perfectly to my rump, and where I trusted the flush on my toilet – you know, the important things in life. But home is also the place you go to at the end of the day, to close your eyes (and try desperately to ignore the sounds of 90’s synth vibrating through the walls). It’s in your routine, the one that you don’t have to share with anyone else.
2020 took away my routine, like the thieving little bastard it was, and in its destructive wake my home became a place invaded by unwelcome renters. It became the place I couldn’t get away from. It left me feeling constricted – a base-level suffocation that had nothing to do with how little fridge space I was getting.
Image by Julia Wrzesinska
I started to seek home in other places. Quiet places. Places where the feeble scraps of my new routine would be safe from greedy hands. Finding solitude in isolation became my pastime, and slowly, I became at home with being alone.
Graveyards are a great place to feel at home, as are deserted public footpaths, coastal walks, and cars parked on cliff tops. A stretch of woodland out by my grandparent’s house recently became my favourite home. It has these dark nooks and crannies that make me think of sinister plots and Scandinavian dramas, and over the summer, a huge tree fell across the path there, and it took three months for someone to move it. Nothing says ‘solitude’ like a massive fallen beech tree that’s been completely forgotten about.
I found home by the ocean, on the safety of the dry beach, and I found home whilst sitting in my bedroom between a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. I stopped focusing on my home décor and started sorting through the inner clutter caused by the lack of privacy in my life. In doing so, I fell back in love with my home.
I’m familiar with home now, in a way I haven’t ever found cause to be before. I still love my books, and my sofa dent, and my toilet flush, but I’ve made space for space, too. In the dark depths of isolation, I’ve found a gratifying ally in solitude.
Images by Julia Wrzesinska
Words by Tillie Holmes
Images by Julia Wrzesinska
Edited by Emily Gough