I've been depressed and suicidal. Feel trapped maybe 80% of the time. Really shit. I live in a flat with my partner and children. A small balcony is the only outside space I have however it is so high up and my children are so young that the door has to he locked, the windows always closed except when we are out to air out the house.
In March, during the first lockdown last year me and DP just said 'fuck it' and we decided to apply for an allotment.
My life has changed almost completely. We go every single day without fail. We love it there. The whole family.
My sister works with animals and is doing a uni course and she just text me the other day with a theory that blew my mind.
She said that when animals are held in captivity they obviously get depressed and start doing unnatural behaviours that aren't seen in the wild such as pacing, biting themselves etc.
But people can do things to help them feel like they are fulfilling their natural behaviour 'quota' such as giving rabbits a sandbox so they can dig, or scattering food or hiding it in boxes they have to shred to help them feel like they are foraging trather than just getting food from a bowl.
You know, taking dogs for walks and runs, stuff like that.
And she said that she was thinking about it and us having more time outside, growing and harvesting food, etc is our natural behaviour (foraging I guess) and us having an allotment is sort of like enrichment for humans. The difference in myself is unbelievable. I was sectioned 2 years ago and I feel like my old self now. Or my new self.
We also go blackberry and apple picking together and we would walk along a river to walk to our grandparents on Saturdays together (sister and me and my children) and it would take us hours in blackberry season because we literally just couldn't stop ourselves from getting more (we didn't take everything but there were bushes for about 30 mins of our walk so we would pick and pick and pick without really making a dent.)
We spoke about it afterwards and said it felt like being a child playing on the 2p machines and winning a toy. It really scratched an itch.
My nan and grandad and great aunt and uncle tell us loads of stories about when they were kids going out in the morning and not coming home until dark. Or travelling literally miles with their friends every day just to play. When I was a child I was allowed to play around the block and down to the park with my friends, knocking on and such. Similar thing going out and not coming home until the streetlights were on.
We did live in a house in a nicer area than I am in now, still a shitty council estate but where I am now is the lowest of the low. I cried when I moved in bad. But its cheap so we can save to get away which we couldn't do in a nicer area.
But my eldest is 8 and hasn't played out alone yet. He isn't as mature as I was as a child and very much a risk taker so, you know I'm taking all this in to account. But i had been out on my own or in charge of my younger siblings for years at this point.
He would run for miles and live in a tree if I let him but he really doesn't do well indoors. Its like a husky living in a shed, he just has too much energy to be inside. He has literally broke my wardrobe and bedroom door by climbing up like a monkey.
Anyway I don't really have an Aibu, I suppose.
I was just hoping other people feel like me? like I don't belong in the inside world. Like we belong somewhere else?
We travel, go on holiday
take day trips to nature reserves
every house has a garden for their own outside space so clearly being outside is a priority for most people
but we are in an indoor world.
I don't know what I'm asking but does anyone get me?