How can I include more of myself?

I've always preferred home. Home over travel. Home over socialising. Home is my belonging. No matter what I want, if it comes at the expense of home, I'll give it up.

At five, we had neighbours who had a kid of the same age. Stephen would knock on my door every Saturday morning. He was a strange kid, and I didn't want to see him. But the first few times he knocked, my parents forced me to spend time with him.

Stephen and I would sit in his room, the walls bare plaster and scraps of old wallpaper, and we'd play with toys my parents didn't allow me to have. Power rangers and wrestlers and guns. Everything about Stephen, his house, and his toys felt strange to me. Nothing felt like home. When I was at Stephen's, there was a quiet, uncomfortable vibration through my whole body.

Back home the vibration left me, escaping like the heat from an engine. Then I would bathe in the familiarity of home. The stickers on the wooden leg of my bunk bed. The smell of flour and earl grey tea. My mum's sweet humming.

Does everyone feel like this? I've always wondered.

Neither of my parents had a strong sense of home. Their lack of stability and belonging in their own childhoods is a trauma that embedded itself in their DNA. They were very protective of me, growing up. The world was a dangerous place.

When I was eighteen and full of new testosterone and unachievable dreams, I flew to Hong Kong with three friends. I had a seventy litre backpack stuffed with clothes and books, a hotel booking for our first two nights, and little else. Within days I was homesick and scared. On the long bus journeys down the south east of China and into Vietnam, I would fantasise about losing my passport or breaking a leg. Anything to get home. Out in the world without even a room of my own to retire to, I felt vulnerable and exposed, some essential protection taken from me, as though life itself would cut my skin.

I endured the six months, but the part of me that was homesick and afraid didn't resolve itself, I just stopped looking there. For a time, this made life easier. University was mostly straightforward when I showed up as an extrovert. But towards the end of uni, there were moments of deep sadness and moments of intense fear. In these moments, I avoided friends. They couldn't see me like that. If they asked, I said no.

Soon enough, they stopped asking. It's interesting how I interpreted this. At the time, it seemed to me that my vulnerability was scaring people away. Oh man, I thought. No one likes this version of me.

I haven't grown out of the uncomfortable vibration of being in the world. I still dread socialising. If I can say no, I will. This isn't a decision I make, logically. It's a feeling buried deep in my chest and my arms and my cheeks. And yet, to many of those who know me, this is invisible.

Though, I notice there are certain spaces where I can show more of myself. In these spaces, it isn't so hard to be in the world. Human connection comes easier. And I feel a part of me softening. I'm grateful for these spaces, but they don't feel like home, and still I prioritise home.

In Brafe.Space I can show more of myself. September 2021, I attended the first Brafe.Space event, reluctantly. But I was surprised at how much of myself I could bring to the event. At Brafe.Space I wasn't only a founder. I was more. A founder, a writer, a musician, a neuro-divergent. Even during the event, I felt a sense of longing for a community that accepted me for everything I am. I sat at dinner on the second evening speaking about the Beatles with Emile and I thought, "wow, wouldn't it be great if I had this kind of thing in my life". Isn't that funny?

Often, my approach to managing the uncomfortable vibration of being in the world is by not being in the world. I bury myself in Legal OS or, earlier, in my writing. My fears are like traffic cones. They don't mark only where I shouldn't go, they dictate where I am. And so, in avoiding the discomfort, I continue to tread the same path. Nothing new emerges. I often wonder, What am I missing out on?

So I'm endeavouring to include more of myself, discomfort too. For me, a start is to meet for coffee with someone at least once a week. It sounds small, but when I think about this, I feel like that kid again, hiding behind my parents as Stephen bangs on the door. But on the other side of that door, the world hums with potential. Writing this, I can almost hear it. There's song in the air from a nearby park. I almost dream the world is excited to meet me.

written by a member of brafe.space