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I like basements, I always have.

I like concrete floors and walls with at least some open framing. I like furnaces and workbenches and oversized doors. I like wood stoves and storage rooms and pull-chains on the light fixtures. I like needing to keep my shoes on inside.

My grandpa’s basement shop was a wonderland for me when I was very young, with its metal lathe and blast furnace. If there weren’t cartoons on the ‘idiot box’ -as my grandma would call it- downstairs was where I wanted to be. There was quite a large basement in my childhood home as well. An island that contained a central heating unit held the middle of the main room, and around it was a racetrack. We used to ride whatever wheeled apparatus was in fashion for us at the time around, and around, and around, and around in the dim light. A true basement is always generally dim. My first jamspot was cleared to make way for The Main Spot corner store, but my second was in the guitar player’s parent’s basement. His lovely Mom, W, would always make cookies and coffee, and ask us to stay for dinner, and we’d never have to worry about the neighbours complaining about the noise, because they knew what kind of reception they’d receive if they set foot on G’s porch. It had little windows, but it was still comfortably dim.

I like living at ground level. Even being partially under it is, for me, preferred to living above someone. Part of it is because all the functional spaces in a house are on the lower floors. Shops, kitchens, libraries, storage rooms, they’re never upstairs. Upstairses are for bedrooms.

My last place, before I moved here, was a large, two-bedroom subterranean basement suite. It had light wells, was full height, and the main area was huge, so I put my stuff in the bedrooms, and lived in the living room. Eating, sleeping, working out, leisure, all happened in the same room. I went full bachelor, and I loved it. I mostly enjoyed a year of relative solitude in which I got small, lived simply, and healed up as well as I could.

The funny thing about healing up, though, is that once you’ve done some of it, you want to get out and enjoy your health. Have you ever been laid up with a bad injury or illness, and once the necessary internment is over, all you want to do is move, and go outside, maybe say Hello to someone, maybe get a hug?

Where I live now has a pretty good basement. It’s not huge, but it’s got 7 feet of headroom. I warmed to it right away. I tidied it, organized it, and set it up for storage, but also as a station for me to do my online schooling. There’s no windows, but I didn’t think that would be a problem as I’d be busy all the time anyway. I arranged it quite nicely and effectively, with a computer station, a drafting and drawing station, and my recliner. In my mind, I’d just be a busy beaver down there, and I wouldn’t have to leave for long periods at a time.

And I didn’t.

Everyone knows that people who sit for long periods of time without movement or the benefits of outside air and natural light get depressed. It’s inevitable.

Guess what happened.

My first term of school was overwhelming for me, and I struggled greatly. Hez invited me to come and work upstairs more, but I felt that my presence, and my stuff, would be too much of an imposition, and I kept clinging to my basement, and my solitude. I suppose, that in all the struggles I was facing at the time, I forgot that the point of healing was to outgrow myself, and what I needed to do is grow into something new. I had been a separate entity for so long that I had forgotten how to be a part of, to be in a relationship with the world, and with a special individual.

Tools always serve, but you can’t just use one tool for everything. Solitude served me very well, but my healing process now requires a quality of life that I can’t attain alone.

I was worried about being in someone’s space, but I’m SUPPOSED to be in someone’s space, in this shared space, in MY space. I’m not an imposition, I’m a welcome addition, and I forgot that I could be that.

I spend a lot of time at my desk. I write, I draw, I school, and sometimes I play games. I modified my desk, and it is now set up upstairs in a bay window. I can see trees, there’s tons of light, I can hear Hez bustling around downstairs, and I have this weird, persistent feeling.

I can land.

I can unpack.

I’m home.