I have a confession to make.

Sometimes I leave my apartment, walk out to my car, get in… and go absolutely nowhere.

I don’t need groceries. I’m not running an errand. I don’t have an appointment. I just sit there.

Sometimes I turn on an audiobook. Sometimes I scroll through my phone. Sometimes I just enjoy the beautiful, luxurious sound of absolutely nobody talking to me.

And honestly? It’s glorious.

There are four adults currently living in our two-bedroom apartment.

Four of them.

In two bedrooms.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my family. I just want to make that clear before anyone starts wondering whether this is the beginning of a post announcing that I’ve abandoned them all and started a new life in a studio apartment somewhere.

But there is a difference between loving people and wanting to be in the same 1000-ish square feet with those people every waking moment of your life.

When you live in a small apartment, there really isn’t anywhere to go.

The living room belongs to everyone. The kitchen belongs to everyone. The hall bathroom technically belongs to everyone, although there have been times where I’ve considered locking the door and claiming squatter’s rights so I can just soak in the tub uninterrupted.

Even the bedroom isn’t really mine, it’s ours, and my husband has even claimed the small storage unit on our patio as his “gaming room”.

So, I don’t really have any place I can go where I can close a door and escape. There isn’t a cozy reading nook tucked away somewhere. There isn’t a spare bedroom where I can disappear for an hour with a book and emerge refreshed and ready to interact with humanity again.

There are just…people.

People I love very much, but are always there.

I have noticed that, as I’ve gotten older, I need quiet in a way I don’t remember needing it when I was younger. I need time when nobody needs anything from me.

Nobody is asking me a question.

Nobody is showing me something.

Nobody is making a noise that causes me to wonder, What the hell was that?

Sometimes I just need to exist without being perceived, which is how my car became my unofficial private reading room. Or, more accurately, my listening room.

I’ll grab my phone, put on whatever audiobook I’m currently listening to, (currently obsessed with anything by Lucy Score, but that’s for another blog post), climb into the driver’s seat and close the door.

Instant solitude.

It’s not glamorous. Nobody is bringing me cucumber water. There are probably receipts in the cupholder and there is definitely something rolling around under the passenger seat.

But it’s mine.

For that little stretch of time, nobody is sitting next to me. Nobody is walking through the room. Nobody is watching TV five feet away. Nobody is having a conversation in the kitchen while another person is doing something in the living room while somebody else is looking for their charger.

I It’s just me and my audiobook. Usually a ridiculously unrealistic romance where everyone has the energy and flexibility for a sex life that would require both a personal trainer and a chiropractor, nobody ever needs to pee afterward, and every man is apparently walking around with an “appendage” so unusually large that, frankly, someone should alert the medical community.

And somehow, after several hours of listening to these genetically blessed fictional people fall madly in love and have astonishingly athletic sex in every available room of their enormous houses, I’m relaxed enough to go back inside to my very real husband, my very real family, and our very crowded two-bedroom apartment

Because I do love my family. I like hearing their voices. I like knowing they’re there. I like the random conversations and the laughter and even some of the chaos.

I can’t imagine my life without them in it.

I’d just occasionally like a room without them in it. And until we live somewhere with enough space for me to have a little corner that’s completely my own, that room has four wheels and a steering wheel.

So, if you ever see me sitting alone in my parked car for an oddly long period of time, don’t worry.

I’m fine.

I’m not having an existential crisis.

I’m probably just listening to an audiobook and enjoying a minimum of thirty uninterrupted minutes where nobody needs me to find something, answer something, fix something, or make a decision about food.

Now, I have to know…

Does anyone else hide in their car just to get a little peace and quiet? Or what’s the strangest place you’ve claimed as your own when you need to escape the people you love?