I want this autumn to be different. Last winter was an experiment, can I jolly myself out of even falling into seasonal depression? Well, yes I can. But it’s bloody exhausting. I will try it again, it beats lying in bed, begging the grim grey coldness to go away and leave me alone. It requires energy though. I have energy in spades, but also need to make sure I have enough to last.
Autumn also reminds me of all the other Autumns already past, what I did then. The mistakes I made, usually. The lover I left, the time I fainted on the escalator, the ill advised friendships begun on a wave of crisp air and enthusiasm and feelings of possibility, of everything ripening as the outer world dies back.
I want this autumn to be different. I think it will be. Well, it already is…

Hello… Don’t forget this one year old Felix, how he puffs and grins and clings, how he rests his head on your shoulder at night when he’s sleepy, how his words are starting to form. Slowly, slowly; was that ‘hello?’ Did he just imitate my ‘thank you’? No, no – can’t be. The cloud of fluffy yet silky hair, his ooohs and ahhs as he falls asleep, Monk and Bear and Bunny and the sweet slurping he makes on their ears. Don’t forget the ‘hoooo’ing, past now but still recent. His study still chubby thighs, and emerging teeth, and how he still only has one proper tooth in front at the top. The delight, how it’s as good as you knew it would be, this one year old bit. How you aren’t great at the baby bit, but damn you love the toddler stage. And that’s okay! If you happen to be pregnant now, don’t panic. Time heals all, and one day you will have two children, and no babies in sight. And if you aren’t pregnant, well then that’s okay too! Because you can drink in this time, this unknown two yea! r old that I’m so impatient to meet. Lucky you – you already know him! I’m writing from the past, and I can only imagine, and dream. Good luck with the tantrums in Sainsburys Vicky xxx P.S And remember that you’re strong. WhatEVER happens, you are strong, and much more than you know. You can and will cope, whatever life throws at you. Listen to your inner voice, the quiet voice at the back: that’s You.

Disarm myself
I don’t want no one else
All I want is you
All I want is you…
Athlete, Trading Air

When I was a little girl I used to live in a flat in a house which had a gravel driveway down the side of it. My friends and I would jump off the wall, landing safely although occasionally with a twisted ankle or that horrible jarring pain in your legs when you don’t roll out of a jump. The wall can’t have been terribly high, perhaps twice our height. But it felt impossibly far away from the ground when you were perched up there, looking at the little brown stones like a sea spread out beneath you. And there was always a moment when you hesitated before jumping. In essence, that was the jump. The moment before taking off, and the split second of stomach lurching heart singing flying through the air before you landed.
I kind of feel like that, the perching on the wall bit I mean. I know what is coming, and that it will in all likelihood be alright. That everything will be okay, that I won’t twist my ankle or worse – and will land safely in a new place.
But I’m a bit scared. I hesitate on the wall, half enjoying the fear, because contained in it is anticipation, delicious savoured wondering and speculating and imagining.
I wobble a bit, then close my eyes and fall.

So if you want to be with me
With these things there’s no telling
We just have to wait and see
But I’d rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery
Besides maybe this time is different
I mean I really think you like me
Bright Eyes – First Day of My Life

I’m starting to understand just how unnaturally stressed out I have been in the run up to moving here. I have NEVER experienced stress like that. I remember just staring blankly into the distance before going to sleep, unable to summon up the strength to switch off the bedside lamp because of the thoughts which charged through my head, taking control and taking me along with them. I was wrapped in stress and worry, bound by it.

Now it has let me go, and I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know how to function anymore in anything less than a state of high anxiety, and it’s almost as though that’s what my body has become accustomed to. It’s what I need. The calm, the peace here… It feels alien to me. And perhaps a part of me can’t quite believe in it still, believe that the rows are over, that he can’t make my life miserable anymore.

I think I’ve forgotten how to be properly happy. Not how to experience moments of happiness, but how to be content. I have not been content for a long, long time and it’s not coming easy. How do you re-learn being yourself, pottering about the house attending to things and taking pride in things? The time I used to spend on my OU work – my only free time – I now spend sitting twiddling my thumbs, or on the internet, or in bed napping when he naps. I don’t know how to be good to myself anymore, to do something small and beautiful just for the sake of it. And it’s so immensely frustrating, and I’m SO impatient! Okay, so I’m not the worlds most patient person anyway, but especially with myself, with my healing process, I am wracked with irritation and exasperated grumpiness. Not good *shakes head*

I need someone to slap me round the face with a metaphorical wet fish; I feel anesthetized. And deep within the bundled up layers of numbness and stagnation, there is a tiny spark of anger beginning, at him. That he is still destroying my life covertly, that his shitty, emotionally abusive legacy lives on.

I need… I don’t know. To get a grip, probably. And actually make a start on the massive list that is ironically buried under piles of mess on the kitchen table. And I think, to do that I need a babysitter.

Oh well, a decision. That’s a start I suppose

I have the keys to my new place, and I am moving stuff in. I will properly be living there with the small dude after we all come back from the camp in early June. Yay. But, the headaches I am having to sort out, are just so HARD. And the annoying this is, they are really not! The fridge I bought for £35 at the bootsale won’t work? Never mind! I will phone the number the man gave me, and if that doesn’t work or he won’t sort it, I will buy another one from the paper and persuade my reluctant snarling angry ex partner to collect it with me in his car. Simples. But I have no room for extra unexpected stress: I have budgeted how much of me there is to last until the release of the camp, and there is no leeway for stuff like this. The gas engineer who came to do the gas safety certificate accidentally cracked the loose slate tile in the kitchen and I didn’t find out til later. He probably didn’t even realize. And… it makes me want to dissolve into hysterical sobbing instead of shrugging and mentioning it the next time I phone the letting agent. And I DO do the normal things, outwardly. I do shrug, and mention it to them. But inside I am convinced they think I am a bad tenant, and are wishing they had picked someone else, and I’m scared of having to find another home, because I don’t know if I can do all this again in 6 months time. And lots and lots of little things like that keep happening, and I understand that it’s called life.

But I know it will be okay in the end. I know this because I saw my future self and spoke with her, a few weeks ago. She leaned in the car window while I was singing along to Tangerine by Led Zeppelin. I asked her if it would be alright, if I was doing the right thing. And she smiled and told me it would be the best thing I would ever do, and I would wish I had done it years ago.

Yet I still worry. I’m reminded now of the David Sedaris reading on Radio 4 recently, about all the petty squabbles he has with Hugh his partner, but how he needs him really and would be lost without him. Now, I know David was writing a lot of that in a different country to his own, but still there are many similarities. Like, staying unmoving in bed, pretending to be out and afraid to make a noise after declining an invitation to the party in the flat below? That’s something I would do! I sometimes wonder if there are only two groups of people in the world. Those who are making it, and those who are faking it successfully. I think I’m starting to become comfortable being in the second group. I have no idea how normal my thoughts are, but I don’t really care anymore.
I think about my new place and all I can wonder is, what if I don’t know how to work the central heating? Will I look stupid asking the letting agent? It it something people should just know, once they are grown up? What if I can’t make it feel like home? How long does a place have to feel like staying in a strangers house while they are on holiday before it starts to feel routine and familiar? Am I really that scared of everything?

Yes, yes I am. I’m terrified. But I’m not fighting it anymore. Okay, so I’m scared. So what? I feel like a little kid in an adults body who has been tricked into a situation where the only accepted responses are adult ones. Well, never mind. I’ll just muddle through, and have a knot in my stomach that I won’t notice disappear. And one day it will be all right, and I’ll look back and say that wasn’t so bad. What was all the fuss about? I don’t know what I was so afraid of.
When really I know I’ll always be like this. Faking a lack of fear, thinking too much, worrying about what might happen. That’s just me, I suppose.

But there is a part of me that is already jumping around whooping and clapping. And another equally valid part of me that wants to cry and cry and cry and not change anything and let someone else work things out so she doesn’t even have to think, let alone get out of bed and face the day. The part of me that is still tucked up in her little bed in her little room at her beloved granddads house, lightly touching the pink velour curtain, feeling the texture of the fabric as she watches the light die outside and wonders with complete confidence and hope what tomorrow will bring. Knowing that it must be alright because it always is: someone else takes care of it.
I hope I find some balance between them. I hope I can be grown up, now that it matters so much. It’s never mattered more than now.

Things here are strained. A dire, once-in-three-years “properly losing my temper and screaming” row happened a few days ago, and the dust is still settling. The atmosphere is not tense it’s… I don’t know. Unrelaxing. There is no certainty anymore, I never wake up and know how the day will be, or wonder what it will bring. I don’t dare look ahead. It’s all about getting through each day, trying not to collapse in a heap before it’s over. I need to be strong. I also need money, and I don’t have enough. I need a guarantor, and I don’t have one. I need sanity, which I have but sometimes it feels like it’s dribbling away, and I might have to ration it to get me through the next few months – or there won’t be enough to go around.

I remember last year, when I moved out. Thankful, now, as I can learn from that, all the things that I should have done differently, and all the things I remember with a wince. The fear, I think, will take a long time to go. G said to me the other day, “you have to leave home all over again, don’t you?”. But really it’s for the third time. I left home for real in 2007, and a few months later, moved in with someone my mums age. Hmm. Then in 2009 I moved out, but I went back a few months later. There is a pattern emerging here, isn’t there?

I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I don’t ever want to run back because I can’t cope with adult life. I don’t want to feel like a little kid anymore: I HAVE a kid. I wish so much that I had the ability to switch my mind off and not worry about things. It would be the greatest gift I could give myself right now. Instead I lie there at night, too preoccupied to even turn out the light and try and sleep, because there are so many thoughts whirring in my head. How much will a second hand washing machine cost? Can I do without one for a bit? What if he refuses to help me collect it, who can I ask to be a guarantor, what about a cot, what about Peebles’ favourite toys, how should I explain things to a letting agent, what if he… And then my mind blanks out. There are some things I can think about, but can only allude to: custody battles, pet euthanasia, housing estates, homelessness. And I know, that because these thoughts are in my mind, they are almost happening. They are happening in my mind. And because of that, the worst things that could happen, are happening, and I shouldn’t be afraid because it can’t get any worse.

Except you’re not supposed to say that, or God smites you. Please don’t smite me. Please help me find a place to rent with an understanding landlord and all white goods. Please help me.

Do you think there is a God of washing machines? And private lettings? I hope so.
I hope I can stop feeling afraid soon.