Life in Miniature

For one literal hot second, back at the beginning of this year, I decided that 2021 would be the year that I buy a house. 

Never mind two things: #1) that I don't actually want a literal house (a townhouse or condo is more of my jam, kthxbye, and even now, living in an apartment, I refer to my home as a "house",), and #2) that buying a house  in 2021 might be cutting it a bit close in terms of my current apartment leasing situation, which now ends in the spring of 2022...in general, according to my lofty, divorced-from-the-tomfoolery-of-the-pandemic goals, this was it. The year I would buy a house.

Well, guess what? In the most technical sense of the word, in 2021, I did buy a house. 

...just not one that I can live in. 

Most of us, at this point, have established some homebound hobbies, or pandemic pursuits, or quarantine quackeries. Me, I've developed (or at least re-established) several; drawing and playing with paints and blogging and puzzles and colouring and journaling and fuck, I literally can't keep track of them all. But this...this has been creeping up on me for a while, until the time came over this last month for me to give in. I went onto eBay and somehow managed to find a beautiful dollhouse, already built and ready for my "creative" eye, and mindbogglingly, only a few miles south of where I lived, and thus, easily delivered. 

The thing is, I have a lot of conflicted feelings about this hobby (because, spoiler alert, the dollhouse is only part of the hobby. Miniatures--as in, dioramas and god only knows what else--are a kinda big thing...ha...paradox much?) ANYWAY, part of it goes back to my original insecurities about art and crafts and creativity and vulnerability and failure, but more than that is the fact that...this is not the first time I pursued this hobby. The first time I did, I was a confused and isolated 11-year-old who didn't know how to interact with people or make friends; who was absorbing what in hindsight now seems like a fairly steady diet of trauma and rejection; who wasn't happy with her current life but didn't know how to change it. I had a dollhouse and a separate universe that I immersed myself in, and while my family went along with it, sometimes I now wonder if that was the healthiest thing for me to immerse myself in an imaginary life with imaginary people and circumstances, rather than leaning into actual life and reality. And when I mentioned all of this to my therapist earlier this week, her question was, Well, is it a coincidence that you've taken this up again, at this particular time?

I don't have answers to that. But I do have a dollhouse. And hopefully, I still have a healthy grip on actual life and reality.