Approximate reading time: 13 minutes
I am happy to report that it has been a better two weeks.
I feel like I am starting to pull myself out of this funk I’ve been in for the last… mmmm… couple of months. Of course, it has helped that I have suddenly been inundated with dog and cat sitting jobs, with some of my regular fur babies, for the school holidays. So, I am very grateful to have a little reprieve from supply teaching for the next 3 weeks.
In hindsight, I realise I just needed some time to process things.
Moving in with a couple last year was not my brightest move.
Of course, I do realise it was a necessity at the time,
I was essentially a week away from being homeless.
It feels like my mind has been working overtime trying to untangle all my ‘life lessons’ from that experience.
(‘Cause that’s what I do, unfortunately…..I analyse the shit out of everything until its compressed into bite-sized chunks that I can file away in my mental filing system.)
I have been trying to write about it for 3+ months,
but I eventually gave up and decided to let it go.
And low and behold, all of a sudden, the words are forming, and I’m making sense of things.
(Go figure)
I suppose the biggest
(very conscious block)
as to why I didn’t want to write about it was because I really and truly liked my ex-flatmates. I mean, what if by some freak of nature they stumbled across my blog post and then felt incredibly hurt by what I had said about them?
What if…
What if…
What if…
I eventually came back to the realization that this blog is the story of
MY life
Filled with MY thoughts
and MY interpretations
of MY experiences.
I justify my writing by reminding myself, daily, that there are always two sides to every story and that anyone is more than welcome to go write their own story about me.
So, on that note, I am going to start by reiterating how much I liked my previous flatmates. They were honestly SUPER lovely people, and, in many ways, living with them was great. They were chatty and friendly and did their best to make me feel at home and welcome. They knew most of their neighbours in the street, and they are the kind of people that everyone just seems to gravitate towards. Case in point, the week I moved into the house, there were 4 vases of flowers in the kitchen that they had been given from different people thanking them for various things they had done.
Indeed, they are ‘Salt of the Earth’ humans that everybody loves.
I feel like the first 6 weeks living there was me fighting with myself about what lovely people they were and how I really SHOULD be feeling more relaxed and at home than I was.
(Aaaah, that dreaded swear word ‘should’)
But I didn’t.
Their house was pristine, and I did my absolute best to keep it that way.
(I can’t tell you how much I value a clean home.)
Lachelle, my inner child part, who is responsible for cleaning up after me, was on her utmost BEST behaviour for 5 whole months. She washed and dried every dish, packed them away after every meal, and cleaned the counters and hob. She was on red alert NOT to leave any of my stuff around the house and made sure she didn’t mess anything on the floor.
She played like a stuck record in my head, reminding me to turn lights off every time I left a room.
“Lights off!”
“Lights off!”
“Don’t forget the lights!”
Did you turn the lights off?
Go BACK and check!”
And she amazingly didn’t leave my laundry drying on the rack for days!
Dare I say it …..Lachelle behaved like,
ummmm,
a reasonably responsible adult,
and I have to say I was ever sooo proud of her.
And yet, somehow, her best efforts just never felt quite good enough.
I felt like a guest staying in an Airbnb who needed continual little reminders of exactly how things needed to be done in the house. Every other week I would get a “Happy Monday…. text” which would then go on to very sweetly highlight what I wasn’t doing correctly. They were never aggressive or punitive, simply friendly little reminders of how to get things right. I felt like I had a constant running list in my head of all the things I needed to not fuck up and it was emotionally exhausting. I grew up as a child walking on eggshells, and the desire not to get things wrong is, apparently, well and truly SCORCHED into my DNA.
Even though my logical head knew it was never personal and I continually reminded myself of that
(Focus on the positives!!!
Focus on the positives)
…..it was a little soul destroying to realise how so much of my energy can still be sucked up trying NOT to disappoint others.
One day, I was very late for school; I had just done up my laces when I suddenly remembered I hadn’t turned any of my lights off upstairs.
FUCK!!!!
(Dam you Lachelle, why didn’t you do your job!!)
My desperate need to respect the “NO shoes in the house rule” meant I didn’t have time to de-shoe; otherwise, I would have missed my bus
(That only came every 20 minutes).
So, I made the executive decision to deal with the fallout of forgetting to turn 2 lights off!!!
(It was a brave move!)
I reminded myself that it wasn’t the end of the world.
A couple of lights on once in a blue moon wasn’t going to break the bank.
Of course, as expected, I did get my “Happy Monday text”….very sweetly reminding me that I hadn’t turned the lights off and informing me that their electricity had doubled in the last 3 months.
(Which would seem to perfectly coincide with how long I have lived there)
DOUBLED!!!!!?
(Fucking hell what WAS I doing with all that electricity?)
Of course, I could have perhaps made the very logical argument that the last three months were also the start of winter, so if there had been a spike in their electricity bill, then that could possibly be the reason.
Central heating, perhaps? ….
But I couldn’t even do that because their heating was barely ever on.
Which incidentally brings me to the biggest issue in the house:
It was freezing.
My room felt like the freaken North Pole.
I spent most of my time shrouded in a huge hooded Eskimo-like gown that I bought at Primark, hoping they would get my oh-not-so-subtle hint.
But, alas, no.
In fairness, I did try speaking to them about it. They were very sweet and understanding, promising to turn the heat up, but nothing much changed. Or they might turn the heating on for an hour or so but then we would be back to normal.
I will admit my initial rage was abundant ….
(We all know how I feel about being ignored;-)
Isn’t it funny how you don’t value something as simple as heat until you don’t have it anymore.
I realise I could have complained more, I could have pointed out the fact that as landlords, it was their legal responsibility to ensure that the house was heated adequately enough, 18°C in the bedroom and at least 21°C in living rooms. I could have expressed my frustration at the constant text messages and how unnecessary they were.
But I had to come to terms with….
What would be the point?
I didn’t have a yearly contract.
We had initially agreed to a three-month probation period to see if we could live together…and obviously we couldn’t.
This was their home, and as lovely as they were as people, I didn’t fit in.
I was surprisingly ok with that.
I have lived with enough flatmates in my lifetime to know what type of people I feel relaxed, comfortable, and myself around.
So I handed in my notice,
and I left amicably.
Random story:
The entire time I was staying there, I was completely paranoid about losing their house keys. For the last 4 years, I have resorted to keeping my house keys and my bank card on a lanyard around my neck…
(Yes, like a 5-year-old)
I can’t tell you how many times in the past I have dropped stuff on the tube or left keys in the front door.
(Training myself not to be an absent-minded idiot has been hard work, I tell you;-)
I am pleased to report that the lanyard has helped significantly, and my general lossage since 2021 has been minimal.
(Of course, that didn’t stop me from neurotically worrying about doing it again)
On the last night before I moved out, I opened the front door with my front door keys and breathed a
HUGE
sigh of relief.
“OMG, you made it!
You didn’t lose their keys!
YOU LEGEND, YOU!”
Do you think the next day, when I was moving out, I could find their keys ANYWHERE?
Nope.
I unpacked my entire room in my new flat (TWICE) and I still never found them.
I honestly don’t know what on earth happened to the dam things….
The cost to replace the triple locks on the front and back doors came to a whopping £411.
Frankly, by that point, I was just happy to be out of there.
*************
My new house is lovely.
There are 5 of us living here in total.
Everyone is friendly, everyone cleans up after themselves and we all pretty much keep to ourselves.
The house is WARM with all of us having equal access to the thermostat if we need a little more or less heat.
(Democracy at its finest)
The kitchen and bathroom lights are sometimes left on by mistake.
(NOT by me, of course!!!!!
I am reformed;-)
But, nevertheless, I really couldn’t give a dam,
and apparently,
neither does anybody else.
What a relief😊
I feel relaxed, calm and more like my old self these days.
Written 17th of April 2022
‘Good to me’
Three hours of travelling
Home on a coach
Passing breath-taking fields
Of pure golden gamboge
With a heart so full
It almost hurts
With so much love and gratitude
It might actually burst
As I listen to a country song
That popped into my feed
I loved it so much
It got played on repeat
‘Good to me’
By Florida Georgia Line
So beautifully captured
What plays through my mind
The words just reverberate
To every inch of my being
Awe-inspiring gratitude
Which is so amazingly freeing
This breathless beautiful
Knowing deep down in my soul
Every inch of my heart
And body is whole
And as I listen to the words
How he so happily sits
On his farmhouse front porch
Kissing his baby’s honey lips
I’m not sure if I wanted
To laugh or cry
As this feeling of joy and gratitude
Catapulted me sky high
Because as beautiful and amazing
As it is to be in love
To have a person in your corner
To hold your hand
Fill your cup
It’s so true how that feeling
Of love and acceptance
Feels so much more powerful
When it streams from your inner presence
And I think about how
For most of my life
Saying goodbye after holidays
Always made me want to cry
I hated the feelings
That it always stirred in me
Saying goodbye used to feel
Like utter agony
Like I was leaving my heart
I never wanted holidays to end
Nothing beats the love and acceptance
Of family and friends
But today, for the first time
I was so conscious that
I no longer feel like
An emotional pack rat
Clinging to happy feelings
Not wanting them to disappear
Panic that they will dissipate
When the end is near
It’s this overwhelming knowing
I carry within me
My own hope
My own happiness
Everything I need to just be
And yes, it would be beautiful
To share this with someone
But at this moment in time
It’s wonderful
Simply sharing it with one