Approximate reading time: 60 minutes

Hello all,

I’m back!!👏 Apologies that it’s been six months since my last post! To be honest it has kind of felt like my creativity-well dried up.

I would be lying if I said I have even thought about writing during that time. But now, I think I am ready to get back on the proverbial horse. I have currently been staring at my screen for about 20 minutes wondering what on earth I even want to say? But as always, I’m sure by the time I have finished this post I will have sifted through all my thoughts and emotions, my life lessons will be crystal clear and EUREKA I will have a point!!!!

PS. One of the most frequent feedback comments I have received about my blog posts is that they are sometimes too long. (This is indeed true!!) I have put much thought into how this botheration could be solved. (Both for your happiness and mine!) I did contemplate saying less. (…for a full 3 seconds) But then soon came to my senses and realised that’s NEVER going to happen! (No use reaching for unattainable dreams.) But then, as if by a miracle….I finally came up with a solution. Are you ready????

A chaptered blog. (Genius!)

That’s right this post will be chaptered, therefore you can read one chapter a night and I never have to worry about my posts ever being too long again.

I tell ya…..sometimes the inspiration is truly mind numbing….!!!!😂👏👌

Prologue

Let me just start by saying, contrary to how it may appear at times…I do have a plan for my life, My decision to move to London two years ago was driven solely by my desire to study a specific course in London that I would never have been able to afford in South Africa. (I’m not divulging what the course is as I feel I must maintain an iota of secrecy in my life!😉) What I will say is that 2020 was going to be PHASE 2 of my ‘Top-Secret-Plan’.

So armed with my daily mantra “Everything is always working out for me” 2020 was panning out to be an awesome year. Within the space of 2 weeks, it literally felt like all the stars were aligning to make all my dreams come true!!! (Thank you, God!! Clearly, my unwavering patience and my saint-like ability to never to moan about life were all going to pay off!😉)

Chapter 1

“Omne trium perfectum”

(Everything that comes in threes is perfect!)

Adopt a Granny

Last year I found out about a government initiative called Homeshare that is aimed at helping to combat loneliness in older people. As my few, (but oh so ardent followers), will remember I did write a post on loneliness last year which made me all the more excited about this venture. It seemed like a pretty cool way of perhaps giving a little back and maybe helping to alleviate this problem, even if it was just for one person. I have through the years managed to build many friendships with older people that have always been so beneficial to me. Some of my fondest memories growing up involved me sitting on my grandmother’s bed listening to her regale the stories of her life. After watching this advert I decided that I wanted my own granny!

The basics of how Homeshare works: You join an agency, go through a vetting process and are then placed in a suitable home to help support an older person. You live in their home, pay reduced rent and are contracted to give 10 hours a week of time to your new “housemate”. How you choose to donate your time is normally discussed and put into a contract before you move in. It could be anything from, shopping for them, helping them with cleaning, cooking meals or simply just watching TV with them. So I signed up. About 6 weeks later a placement was found for me in Stanmore. It was with a 96-year-old lady whose husband had died 4 years prior. Her house was lovely, I had a beautiful room and she seemed really sweet. I was as happy as Larry because instead of paying £800 a month for a single room, I was now going to only be paying £200. (That’s a whopping saving of £600 a month which was going catapult phase 2 of my plan forward about 3 months!! ) Happy days!!!🦄

Dream school

A day or so after my ‘granny home’ was finalised I got invited by one of my ‘top-paying’ agencies (Wohooo Lets hear it for Teacherbooker!!!!) to apply for a year 2 post in….(wait for it!)…..Stanmore! (What are the chances?) For years now I have been adamant that I am no longer interested in doing any full time teaching positions. While I love and adore working with children I have very little patience for all the bureaucracy, paperwork and bullshit that so sadly comes hand in hand with fulltime teaching. As stressful as day-to-day supply teaching can be, at times, I can’t deny the overwhelming feeling of elation that I get every day when I walk out of a classroom at 3.30 pm AND GO HOME! But this school was literally a 5 minutes walk away from my new home, so I thought I would be crazy not to at least check it out. I was completely blown away by the school. The year two class that I would be working with was amazing. Their class teacher had left in December and since then the school had appointed two new teachers, both of whom just never turned up on the day that they were meant to be starting. (Insane…who does that?) So these poor kids had had a succession of supply teachers and very little stability since the beginning of the year.

On spending some time with the class on my interview day one of the little boys looked at me with the most forlorn little face and asked: “Are you going to be our new teacher?” I was hooked.

In order to explain how amazingly perfect this school was for me, I need to give a little backstory. Last year I agreed to teach a year one class for three months up until Christmas. The class had also had a succession of teachers after their class teacher, who had been an NQT (Newly qualified teacher) had apparently had an emotional breakdown one month after school had started and had ended up resigning. (Should have been my first clue!) I adored the class but found the workload that I was expected to teach to be absolutely insane. In hindsight, I probably could have avoided the situation had I actually listened to my gut on the very the first day that I was asked to teach there. But after a 6 week summer holiday (of not being paid) I decided to ignore that ‘inner knowing‘ in return for guaranteed pay until the end of the year. (Big mistake!!) I decided I could suck it up for a mere 3 months. (How hard could it be?) Harder than I could have imagined. I have never in my life felt like such a terrible teacher as I did in my month at this school. My anxiety levels were through the roof as I tried every day to teach the regimented time table that was pre-planned for me to follow. My students were 5/6 years old and I was expected to keep them on the carpet for over an hour and fifteen minutes every single morning. It has been scientifically proven that on average children can concentrate on one task for two to five minutes per year of their age. For example, if you have a classroom of 6-year-olds, you can expect 12 to 30 minutes of attention from your students. Needless to say by the time I got to the last half an hour of my lesson on the carpet (which was often maths) I had pretty much lost most of them. I then had to use pre-scribed maths textbooks that relied predominantly on all your students being able to READ and make inferences from what they had read. (Sigh) While I had one table of 6 children that found the work relatively easy to do the rest of the class struggled immensely. I also, if I am completely honest, had numerous disagreements with the school’s deputy’s headteacher who had preplanned all the work and was appointed to be my overseer. I will 100% admit that this particular woman is an excellent teacher in her own rights, however, our teaching styles could not have been more polar opposite. Rather than feeling encouraged and supported to teach in a way that suited my personality, I continually felt reined in to be more like her. (Type A personality – I am not!) An example of this was when she insisted that, to save time, I walk around the class and mark the children’s spelling tests as they were still in the process of writing them. I respectfully refused and told her afterwards that I didn’t feel comfortable doing this. I explained my reasoning, on the grounds that for children who struggle with their spelling, the anxiety of seeing all their mistakes were only going to cumulate in them feeling more anxious and them then making even more mistakes. Her solution to ‘this problem’: she would simply come into class every week and give the spelling tests and do the marking herself. (Um did she just completely missed my point?) I also came into school one day and was horrified to see that she had pulled down and disposed of all the artwork, letters and pictures that my students had brought into school for me and that I had very proudly displayed above my desk. When I asked her what had happened to the work she said that it was distracting them from their learning.

I felt completely exasperated, anxious and on edge in my own class. I knew I wasn’t coping, but I had made a commitment for 3 months and I was determined not to have these students lose yet another teacher. No doubt my strain was beginning to show and after one particularly bad day when I left the school at lunchtime in tears, I was called in to see the head and deputy teacher. When asked how things were going I couldn’t hold back as to how overwhelming I was finding everything. I was listened to and then it was politely surmised that as I have been out of full time teaching for so long, maybe I just didn’t understand how much teachers have to get through in a day. (um ok…point noted.) I was then issued with a quasi-ultimatum from the headteacher that went something like this: “The most important thing in school is reading and maths. The other things that you are doing like the meditation (and news time) are not necessary. Can you get on board with that.” Sadly my answer was an emphatically clear ‘No‘. I think that might have been the first time I got fired/ or quit. ( I can’t quite figure out which one it was?). It was one of those defining moments in life where you can all of a sudden see clearly who you are and what you stand for. For me, my student’s mental and social well-being will always, always come above everything else and if the school didn’t see any value in my efforts to create a calm and relaxed environment to achieve greater learning then quite simply it wasn’t the right school for me.

On the day of my interview at the new Stanmore school, I was informed by the deputy head that teaching mindfulness was a very big part of the school ethos and that all classes had mini-meditation session three times a day to help get them focused and calm for learning. (It was a sign I tell you!) I had found my school. The job was offered and accepted on the spot.

Phase one was coming along even better than I could have ever anticipated.

• Huge savings on rent! (✔)
• Guaranteed work (Pay) till the end of July! (✔✔)

First-ever writing job

A little less than a week later I got an email on Instagram from a man who had recently started up an online magazine. He said that he had found my blog post on my modelling profile and that he really enjoyed my writing style. Would I like to come and write for his magazine? Are you fucking kidding me? 😮

YES!!!!! 100000 x Yes!!!

I can’t even begin to tell you how freaken happy I was. It’s one thing when your family and friends enjoy your writing. (They have had years to understand and appreciate your nuances of weirdness!) BUT this was a new league!!! The job was only going to be on a volunteer basis as the magazine was still in its infant phase but I honestly didn’t care. I was more than happy to just gain exposure and experience as a writer. The best part was that I would be interviewing successful creatives and then writing about their stories. ( I am a natural-born raconteur…could it be more perfect? )

And so began the absolute best year of my life!

Chapter 2

The unravelling begins

But I’m so lovable?

I guess I can say I went into my new home feeling fairly confident of my…um beguiling charms. Believe it or not, I have, in the last 20 years, lived in 9 different house-shares and with +/- 86 flatmates. (My first London home was a house-share with 28 people and my home last year was 18 people.) So not that I like to brag or anything, buuuuut I kinda feel like I have earned Veteran Housemate Status. Par from the handful of nutters, that I had the pleasure of living with:

(“Dear Dave …..I’m just saying, I still sincerely doubt that you actually killed someone!” Um…Thanks, Mike for bringing that perfectly good blanket, (that you found ON THE STREET) home and infecting our house with bedbugs. Dude, what the fuck where you thinking? )

Anyway, besides the few oddballs, I think I have lived with some pretty awesome people many of whom are still good friends today. Ok, I will openly admit that some of my earlier housemates might have had a bit of a raw deal with me. Um…young Gayle was not yet trained in the art of cleaning, nor was she adept at dealing with her engulfing emotions which at times meant she would be over emotional and could often end up barricading herself in her room for days on end as she attempted to wade through the internal darkness!! (For this I apologise profusely)

But I am pretty confident that in the last 10 years or so, she has managed to rectify that behaviour and find more healthy outlets for her overthinking of everything. (Like putting it all down in a blog!😉)

So I feel like overall house-sharing has always been a positive thing for me and I am very grateful that I have learnt to get along with so many different types of people.

One sweet, 96-year-old granny was going to be a cinch! 😁

To be honest, I had noooooo idea it was even possible for me to cause so much stress for one little person. (Me???) I tried my best but it became very apparent, very fast that my Veteran Housemate Status was slipping. I did terrible things……terrible……

I nearly killed her one day because I accidentally changed the setting on the microwave. (Quote: “I nearly died, I NEARLY died!)

I had too much food on my (one) fridge shelf…..when was I going to eat it? (Um this week?)

I used the cupboard in the hallway to put my bag in WITHOUT asking… (Ummmmm Ok except I did ask the day I moved in?)

I put some hand-wash on the bathroom sink.

I used her shower mat when I climbed out of the shower! (I’m sorry)

I used her hand-towel! ( Urrg…I NEVER!😣 )

I filled the kettle up too much. (Note: Only fill it up to just above the element….GOT it!👍)

I dropped a small piece of lint on my bedroom floor and found a handwritten note next to it asking me to please keep her carpets clean! (GEES LADY…WHY ARE YOU IN MY ROOM?!)

Although, I will admit, that she truly had a sweet and enduring side which meant we did have some lovely dinners and chats it was draining coming home every night and having to listen to my most recent list of faux pas. I continually reminded myself not to take it personally, she has after all never shared her home with anybody else other than her husband of 64 years.

(Smile sweetly.) It would just take a little bit of time. When I moved in it was decided that I would have dinner with her at 6.30 and then spend some time watching TV with her. (I would usually spend about an hour and a half a day with her every evening) She was slightly deaf so the TV was always on full blast….(Bless, she did ask if it was too loud…..but what could I say? If she turned it down she wouldn’t have been able to hear anything.) We didn’t have the same taste in TV at all. Her favourite programme was ‘The Midwife!!! THE MIDWIFE!!!!! As an almost 45-year-old single woman, the last thing ON EARTH that I want to watch is other WOMeN popping out babies!

I didn’t really feel like I could just relax or feel at home. I also found it really hard to sleep with me waking up at around 1 am every night and then just lying there for hours.

How do teachers do it?

I moved in with Granny on Sunday 26th January and started my new job the following morning. Before I say anything else I have to stress how lovely the staff and children were at this school. I have never been to a school before where so many teachers made such an effort to come and introduce themselves and offer help if I needed it. On my third day there one of the teaching assistants brought me a bunch of flowers just to say thanks for taking the job. (This was beyond sweet.) My kids, while a little bit chatty, were also absolutely amazing. Of my 31 students, 6 of them had SEN needs including one child who as on the autism spectrum. Fortunately, I had the help of two fantastic teaching assistants who were really caring and supportive. I was very lucky that all the planning had already been done by the other year two teacher so essentially all I needed to do was teach. The work was appropriate and well-paced and I was grateful that this time around I felt like I was able to teach effectively.

All that being said, it was still exhausting. I was in 7.30 every morning and never left before 6 pm. I don’t think I had longer than 15 minutes for lunch for the entire first two months that I was there. (And I wasn’t even doing the 15min of guided reading that I was ‘supposed‘ to be doing every day during my lunch hour) My classroom laptop was ancient which meant most mornings I spent about 15 minutes just trying to get the dam thing working in conjunction with my interactive whiteboard. (This meant shutting them down and restarting numerous times.) More often than not when I tried to print work my laptop somehow seemed to jam the printer which left me continually scrambling to try and sort out ‘other work’ that I could do for the day. (And feeling IMMENSE shame because none of the other teachers could print either!🙄) Two weeks after I started, my year twos had to sit through their practice SATS ( Statutory Assessment Tests). I got to see first hand how devastating these papers can be for so many children. During that week I had three children start crying during the test simply because they felt so overwhelmed, which was truly heartbreaking. After a week I understood why that lovely teaching assistant who had handed me the flowers, had so dramatically beseeched me: “Please don’t leave! ” Lesson preparation, marking, photocopying, cutting worksheets, making resources, marking, continuous ongoing assessments, marking, assessing existing SEN plans, creating new SEN plans, attending continuing professional development (CPD) training, online safeguarding training, updating displays….the list went on, and on and on. On top of this, my autistic child (who so desperately needed consistency) was really struggling with all the changes of teachers that his class had experienced over the last two months which resulted in quite severe behavioural challenges. I was very grateful that the school had such a supportive and caring SEN team that truly did their best to support me, however, it still meant that many of my lessons were disrupted by his behaviour. As a result, our attempts to get him the proper in-class support that he so rightly needed also meant that a significant amount of time was used up in meetings with educational psychologists and filling in endless forms and questionnaires for them.

There just weren’t enough hours in the school day to get everything done. (And I was not even doing any planning!) I continually fought with myself on whether or not I ‘should’ be taking work home to do. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that taking work home as a teacher is the unwritten expected rule. As my friends and family will no doubt attest for me… I hate rules!!! Especially crazy unfair ones that expect me to work for free. (I was after all still a supply teacher, only getting paid a daily rate with no perks of holiday pay or sick pay) Of course, most headteachers will vehemently advocate that their staff NOT take work home. Healthy work-life balance is always encouraged….and yet that doesn’t seem to stop the work coming in.

(TUC Article)

I dunno it just irks me BIG time! When did it become acceptable for companies to steal our most precious commodity from us?

Our time.

(Ok rant over.)

So I did my best to stick to my principles and tried to not take work home. After about a month I started to feel that overwhelming, choking anxiety that I had felt in my last school. I was emotional, continuously tearful and as already mentioned, severely sleep-deprived. I found it almost impossible to do all of the things that have kept me healthy and sane these last couple of years. I wasn’t meditating, or journaling and I was too down/exhausted on the weekends to even make an effort to connect with any of my friends.

The demise of a Granny dream

Of course, it didn’t help that I then had to come home to my second job in the evenings. It was becoming increasingly clear that things were not going to be working out with my very own granny. What I had hoped would be an uplifting and supportive experience for us both seemed to just be causing her (and consequentially me) continual stress. Things all came to a head one Saturday afternoon when she came home and found me doing a load of washing. She was absolutely furious with me because

(a) It was a Sabbath (How dare I be so inconsiderate of her neighbors?)

(b) I was apparently only allowed to do one load of washing a week. (Ummm please show me the piece of paper that I signed agreeing to this?)

c) I didn’t ask permission to use her washing machine. (Sigh🙄)

She then saw the medication that I had picked up from the pharmacy for her. Oh Dear Lord…that was the end.

Granny: “WHAT’S THIS???”

Me: ” A repeat prescription order slip that the pharmacy gave me?”

Granny: “I’ve never in my life received anything like this before from them!! (Um..they come standard with every subscription that you pick up?). Now I have to go and sort this out as well!! Oh, absolutely everything has just fallen apart since you moved in here!”

Things then escalated from there with her claiming that I was also cheating her out of time. ie Meaning that I wasn’t spending the allotted 10 hours a week with her. (I bloody well was!!!) and her branding me the rudest most inconsiderate person she has ever met when I tried to stand up and defend myself on this point.

As my Veteran Housemate status came crashing to the ground so did every inch of my desire or confidence that I could make this work any more. I was done. If she didn’t even trust me, what was the point? I went out that day and by some sheer miracle, I found a house to move into with a 55-year-old man, Deon and another 32-year-old lodger. I moved out the next day.

Survival time in Granny house: 14 days!

Déjà vu

So I moved into my second new home on February the 9th and for the first week, everything seemed amazing. Deon and I got along really well and had a couple of good conversations in the lounge. In hindsight, he did practically all the talking – (an anomaly with me!) but he was charismatic, interesting and clearly very intelligent so I was more than happy to just sit back and listen.

One of the stipulations of me moving into the house was that all plugs needed to be turned off at the socket after use. (ie kettle, oven, toaster, microwave) While I found this a little odd I was willing to agree to just about anything just to escape the granny house! I, unfortunately, underestimate how much it was going to seriously piss Deon off if not done AT ALL TIMES. (In my defence….I really and truly was trying!) Unlike Granny, he had a phone and was able to regularly update me on all my flatmate offences.

• I left the kettle plug on…..(Hand on my heart…I did, three times!)
• I left water in the kettle after I had finished using it. (Which means I was filling it up too much…..but I was only just filling it up to above element??? I’m so confused? How is it I have survived 44 years of not knowing how to use a kettle properly?)
• I left the microwave plug on.
• I left the washing machine turned on after my load. (Don’t all washing machines turn off manually when they are finished?)
• I accidentally turned the outside light on.
• I left a kitchen cupboard door open.
• I accidentally banged the garage door when coming inside TWICE!!! (Incidentally, there was no space for me to keep any of my stuff in his kitchen as I was only given one tiny little shelf. Most of my foodstuff/ crockery needed to be stored in the garage)

I always apologised profusely. He said there was no need to apologise…just stop doing it! Um ok. We seemed to be able to laugh and joke about his obsessive need to have everything a certain way (OCD/anal? Take your pick!) to which he stated that it simply came down to respecting your flatmates….I agreed, however, I couldn’t resist pointing out that his dirty gym clothes and a pile of dirty old slippers had been sitting in our hallway and kitchen, respectively for 4 days so surely respect goes both ways? He conceded my point and gym clothes/slippers were put away. (Awesome I thought we had a good, open working relationship here.) 👍

Around about day 8 it dawned on me that he was now no longer speaking to me. I had no doubt that my inability to get things right was the reason for the sad demise of our budding friendship or perhaps it was me inadvertently pointing out a flaw in his theory of healthy cohabitation. (Dam, why don’t I just learn to keep my big mouth shut) Day 9 I got the “We need to talk text”. (This sounded serious!😯) He wasn’t happy, he didn’t feel like this was working out. I tried to explain that I truly was trying and that I would get better at remembering to turn the plugs off, he just needed to give me a little longer than a week.

Deon: I don’t think you will ever change!! (Dam that’s a little bit fatalistic don’t you think? Like NEVER EVER??😥 )

Me: Well if I am upsetting you so much, do you want me to move out? (I mean it wasn’t like he was actually going to say yes!)

Deon: Yes I think that will be best.

Um ok…..

He gave me till the end of the month to move out.

Survival time in Anal nutters house: 20 days!

You want it when?

Thank God my school holidays were coming up so I could at least have some time to find a new place. I honestly have never needed a holiday as much as I needed that one, it was only a week but it would be enough time to rest and find a new home. I could do it!. On Sunday, the first day before my holiday, I decided it would be a good idea to spring clean the emails in my much-neglected inbox. It was there that I fished out an email from the magazine editor that had been sent 5 days earlier. I was a little dismayed to see that in it was my list of 5 people that I was supposed be interviewing for the magazine. All the questions for the interviews needed to be completed and emailed off by that Friday the 22nd of February. (Hence in 5 days time!) The last thing I wanted to was to spend my whole holiday working AND house hunting. But EVER the trooper, (and never being one for complaining!🤣) I had no choice but to just put my head down and get on with it.

I probably spent about 13 hours that week researching, writing and emailing off my questions. About 20 minutes after I emailed them all off I burst into tears. My IBS had flared up, I was in pain and I just felt completely and utterly exhausted. My holiday was almost finished, I still hadn’t found a new place to live and the thought of starting back at school in two days, without having had a proper rest was just unbearable. I just felt consumed by worry and just didn’t know where the off button was in my brain. Luckily I was going to stay with my best friend, Rachel, that weekend so she got to hang out with weepy/emotional Gayle. (What fun!!)

A couple of hours later one of the interviewees emailed back with an availability date for our interview that was a couple of days after all the fully written articles needed to be in. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that so I decided to get clarification from the editor, maybe he could make an exception for this person? (I mean no one understood better than me that people have busy lives! I’m pretty sure young aspiring entrepreneurs have pretty sizeable time commitments) It was then that I was told that ALL the interviews needed to be completed by the end of the following Friday.

Ummmmmmm…….you mean in 7 days? (This was supposed to be a part-time volunteer job…not a full-time non-paying job.) When it appeared that there could be no flexibility in this time frame, I realised that there was no way in hell I was going to be able to teach full time, house hunt and find time to meet and interview 5 people in the 6 days. So I had to quit….(again). I was slightly devastated but my main priorities needed to be my students and finding a home!

Doomsday

I found a new home the next week which was a newly refurbished 3 bedroom house that I would be sharing with a 49-year-old Croatian man and a new tenant. (Once the landlord had found someone.) It was yet another risk saying yes as I wouldn’t get to meet him before I moved in, but I needed to get out of Deon’s house as he had sent me a rather irate message telling me I needed to move ASAP and I quote: “I simply can’t stand having you in my house any longer. “

(Um ok…..For the record- I hadn’t spoken to him, used his kitchen, used his washing machine or even seen him since the day he evicted me…..that’s 7 days of creeping around the house like a mouse attempting not to annoy ANYONE. (three of those days I had been away for the weekend) Clearly, my ability to torment my flatmates knows no bounds! I just permeate through walls- I’m fucking gifted I tell you!)

I moved into my new house on the 29th of February. The landlord was late getting to the house, so I stood outside for 15 minutes with my whole life packed in boxes, in the pouring rain. The next day I woke up feeling tired and sick but managed to crawl out of bed to put a load of washing on. The washing machine was broken and ended up flooding the kitchen. We also discovered that we had very little hot water as the boiler was broken and a new one needed to be put in. (Deep breaths)

The next day I was back at school and it wasn’t a good day. Apart from feeling sick I also felt terrible because I still hadn’t completed my SEN reports for the term. (The deadline was 2 weeks prior) I had tried to do them a couple of times during the holidays but for some reason, they just weren’t saving, (Yes I was clicking the save button!). After redoing the same one 3 times I had given up. (Sometimes technology makes me want to scream.) I had to go and speak to the SEN teacher and just burst into tears and had to tell her that I was really struggling.

It was all I could do to get through the day. I left school at the end of the day and cried the whole way home. I felt like an absolute failure at home and at school. I have been a teacher for over 20 years- why wasn’t I coping? My underlying thought was: Clearly, my last school was right…..I had NO idea what being a fulltime teacher entailed these days. But the worst thing was that I felt completely and utterly hopeless. For a self-confessed hopeless romantic who continually carries around a colossal bag of dreams for her life, it was the absolute worst of the worst of feelings. I barely slept that night and had to take the day off to go to the doctor. I cried throughout the entire appointment and when she offered to put me on anti-depressants for my anxiety I didn’t even hesitate to say yes. As someone who has never really been a fan of anti-depressants, (hence six years of dedicated therapy) I was totally amazed as to how quickly I saw results. Within less than a week the crying had pretty much stopped. I was still running around like a chicken without ahead at work, but I wasn’t getting so overwhelmed by it. I felt less emotional and strangely resilient.

Chapter 3

Who knew rock bottom had a basement

Bring it on!

OK so I have been working on this post for 4 weeks now and as predicted I have slowly started to become more conscious and aware of my life lessons throughout all of this. I’m also finding myself getting a little bored of the whole ‘everything is wrong‘ narrative. So I’m now going to fast forward my two months in my 3rd house and then hopefully move onto shinier, happier things. (If you made it this far!!! Well done!!)

• New washing machine was ordered- it was subsequently installed incorrectly and ended up flooding the entire kitchen floor (yes, again)
• The kitchen floor tiles were all ripped up and we had no decent floor for over a month.
• Very sadly there was a huge earthquake in Croatia so Anton had to leave to go and help his family. (Noooooooo not my perfect flatmate😮)

Helloooooo Coronavirus!!!!

• Water pipe bursts and flooded my classroom at school.
• Side effect of coronavirus –> I lost my teaching job!
• Side effect of losing my job –> Landlord attempts to evict me
• Landlord refuses to send me a copy of my Assured Tenancy Agreement that I signed when moving in. She claimed that it was now null and void and that I needed to sign a new ‘lodgers’ agreement instead. (Ummm I’m not a lawyer but I’m pretty sure you can’t just ‘up and decide’ to null and void a lease (aka legal document) just because you feel like it?) Plus a lodger is someone who lives with a landlord and I do not! Signing this agreement would give the landlord the legal right to evict me in a month. Needless to say, I refused to sign it. (Now I am finally pissed!!! She picked the wrong girl to pull this shit with!)
• Radiator in my room breaks and leaks water all over my bedroom floor.
• Water pipe bursts in the roof and floods the entire upstairs of the house. (What the hell is going on with all this water?)

(PS I googled spiritual significance of a shit load of water in your life) –

Water is a metaphor for our emotions, so a leaky roof or a plumbing problem can mean that you’re feeling emotionally overwhelmed. 

(You dont say!!!)

Water can teach us how to be flexible and embrace change. Water reminds us to go with the flow no matter what the situation.

(AAAAAAAAAAAAArrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!)

• On the 30th of April, I email her a rather, um lengthy, email highlighting all that has gone wrong in the house in the last 7 weeks. Attached to it was a 6-page inventory of all such ongoings, (because there were MORE!!!) including dates, times, messages…etc. I asked yet again for a copy of my lease that I had signed when moving in, plus for a lock to be please put on my door as she seemed to think it perfectly ok to give complete strangers permission to let themselves into our house, while I was at home. I also asked her politely to please forward the proof of the legal documentation that was necessary when renting out to multiple tenants (ie HMO Licence, Gas and electrical certificates, fire safety measures, proof that deposit has been protected in a Deposit Protection scheme!)
• Needless to say, she had NONE of the above and she was now highly PISSED!! (I then transitioned to becoming public enemy #1)
• I am sent a retaliatory eviction notice (When a landlord evicts you for raising complaints for asking for repairs) I have 30 days to vacate. It’s not a legal eviction as she hasn’t gone through the courts. With the use of a Section 21 Notice, also known as a Notice Requiring Possession, she would be able to terminate my lease in two months. She, however, has failed to protect my deposit so this will deem her unable to use this Section 21 Notice needed to evict me early! (How is it possible for someone who runs her own estate agency, for supposedly 20 years, knows soooooo little about the law?) Anyway, I (being the property law guru that I now am😉) know my rights! But quite frankly I just dont care!! All I want to do is RUN as far away as possible.
• On the 6th May, I am evicted from my home by my landlord who continually started turning up at the house without any notice. She lets herself into the property, is verbally abusive, refuses to leave and then repeated claimed that she now lives there. At one point she refused to allow me access to the kitchen, and on her next visit demanded that I remove all my stuff from the kitchen cupboards. During my last week in the property, I had to call the police 3 times. The landlord told them that she has caught me using class A drugs, (Dam I’m fucking articulate for a crack cocaine addict?) that I have attempted to physically attack her, including trying to stab her with a knife (which was in the bloody kitchen!) and that I am mentally insane. She also told them that it was disgusting that someone like me was allowed to work with children and that she had made sure to tell everyone she knew so that I would never get work in the area again. (Sigh, I’m quaking in my boots!) My homicidal tendencies was the reason given for my IMMEDIATE eviction. That, and the fact that I was a danger and a threat to her other tenants (aka my flatmate) who she then subsequently barred me from speaking to…EVER again! (Who is she? The bloody communication police?) Up until this point, new flatmate and I had been getting along swimmingly, united in our mutual frustration with the house and happily cooking meals together a couple of times a week. So God only knows how I managed to threaten this almost 6 ft, 95kg plus man. Or what she said to him to turn him into a fellow hater. In the space of one week, I went from this :

To this:

• After moving out I emailed the landlord requesting that she please return my deposit and the 3 weeks rent that was paid on the 1st May. I received a rather vicious email back outlining all the damages that I am liable for since moving into the property. (£3000 worth to be exact). Among other things, this included ME flooding the kitchen and damaging the floor, breaking the radiator in my room and for the ‘supposed‘ theft of my flatmate’s frying pan AND phone charger?! (I honestly could not make this shit up!) Its so ludicrously insane its almost laughable, except at the time it wasn’t.

Survival time in the house of horrors…67 days!

WHAT THE FUCK? How did I go from being non-drinking, non-smoking law-abiding school teacher (who never swears!) to a drug-induced manic running around with a knife stabbing people, causing thousands of pounds worth of property damage and still having time to steal frying pans?

God, did you not get the 2020 Memo?

Lessons learnt re-learnt

So after 4 moves in a little over 3 months and with my Veteran Housemate status axed to a bloody pulp I couldn’t help but find myself continually coming back to the same question.

I know there is a lesson in here somewhere…but what the hell is it?

After much psychoanalysis, and heartfelt deliberation I have finally come up with some theories.

Lesson no 1: Sometimes its OK to walk away

My dearly departed parents have always attempted to instil a strong sense of following through and not giving up, especially when things get tough. I say ‘attempted’ because honestly as a Gemini (Yes I believe that shit…leave me with my label please!) I tend to get bored pretty easily. I usually start things with a flurry of excitement and I throw myself into them with about as much passion and vigour as an 85-year man on viagra. Then just as quickly my desire becomes flaccid, I get bored and quit!…….horse riding, modern dancing, guitar, piano, Ceroc, toastmasters, pole dancing, ice skating, ….to name but a few.

(Fuck…no this is not the point I was supposed to be making.)

Ok but for the BIG things in life that I have committed to I have genuinely ALWAYS followed my parent’s advice and stick with them. If I have agreed to do something, and people are relying on me, (ie a job, a course ….aaahhh remember my TEFL course! ) even if I’m not enjoying it I have learnt to suck it up and make it through to the end, regardless of whether or not the situation is having an adverse effect on my health and my emotions. Dependable to death! (The absolute antithesis of self-care)

These last 6 months have been yet another lesson for me about ‘relearning’ that vital lesson that the only thing that matters, in my world, is my physical and mental health, recognising sooner when situations might be toxic, triggering or emotionally draining and then learning to WALK AWAY! I have essentially had to make peace with the fact that sometimes in life, it’s ok to quit!

At the beginning of the year, I read a really great book by Jeff Goins called The Art of Work. (If anyone is still searching for their calling I couldn’t recommend this book more) His first quote right at the beginning of chapter one is

“A calling is not some carefully crafted plan. It’s what’s left when the plan goes horribly wrong. “

What I loved about this book is that it is full of real-life examples of people who have tried, failed, quit, broken down and ultimately ended up finding the most amazing inspiration from these experiences to help them ultimately find their true calling. He talks about how any great discovery, especially that of your lives work, is never a single moment. Of how an epiphany is an evolutionary process: it happens in stages. He also talks about being willing to say yes to new experiences because you just never know how they might just piggyback you a little closer to your true dharma.

Reading this book helped me to reshape how I looked back at so many of my life experiences. Rather than allowing that, oh-too- familiar, feeling of shame that sometimes creeps up on me for not having “Stuck with anything long enough” (I mean surely I could have been the next Jimi Hendrix by now?)

Maybe I could simply be proud of all the many things that I have tried in this life and that I have successfully been able to tick off the “not for me list”. I mean let’s face it….if I was going to be the next Jimi Hendrix, surely I would have enjoyed practising my guitar?

On that same note, little did I know that when 13-year-old Gayle picked up her first diary to write down her heartbreaking unrequited love story (Oh my God it was TRAGIC!!!)….that, that moment would essentially be the beginning of her never-ending love affair, (not with a man) but with writing. Thirty-one, plus, diaries later I am still writing and it’s probably the only thing in my life I haven’t quit! And thank God I have tried and failed so many different things because these experiences have given me so much to write about.

Case in point: I was willing to take the risk of moving in with a 96-year-old granny (even though all my friends told me I was crazy) and it didn’t work out! My plan to be the poster child of ‘home-sharing’ and to make my own video with my own granny one day got shot down in flames and died a slow, agonising, torturous death! But it taught me a very valuable lesson on putting my needs first and learning to let go of the oars when things feel like you are continually paddling upstream.

Consequently, I have also realised that the school in December was 100 % correct about me. I had no freaken clue as to how much work full-time teachers are expected to do.

Rest assured, I am now very clear on this!

Hence from this point on I solemnly declare that I shall never, ever, never take a full-time teaching position again. (Ever!)

No more I’m done! I quit!

I will not deny that a small part of me secretly wishes I had the strength and fortitude to stay and put up the good fight for all us teachers worldwide. It saddens me to know and to read of so many people, like myself who feel driven from the profession because of the unrealistic demands that are placed on us. In the Teacher Wellbeing Index of 2019 it is has been noted that nearly three-quarters (72%) of education professionals describe themselves as stressed and 34% of them have experienced mental health issues in the past academic year. With references being made to sharp rises in tearfulness, sleeping difficulties and irritability amongst education professionals…. it’s clear that something has to change. I unfortunately just don’t have the desire or will to fight this fight and I am finally getting off the boat.

I found this quote a few weeks ago which pretty much sums up my number one lesson:

Lesson 2: That Unfinished post

I have for the last 2 years or so wanted to write a post on narcissism. My desire to write this post has been inspirited by some painful experiences that I have had with these types of people in the past. Ten years ago before I started with therapy I had very little, if no existent, knowledge about the spectrum of narcissism. I had obviously heard of the term narcissist before however terms like love bombing, gaslighting, going grey rock, flying monkeys, triangulation or narcissistic supply were all completely foreign to me. Neither did I have any understanding as to how certain people are far more susceptible to attracting narcissistic people into their lives than others. (Namely me!) How my continual need to be liked, my often non-existent emotional boundaries and always choosing to believe the best of people (Such a noble attribute!) were all simply my kryptonite. It was during a particular conversation with my therapist, Konrad van Staden, about 2 years ago that my blinkers finally fell off. (This shall be covered at a later date)

Since then I will admit I have had a somewhat morbid fascination with narcism and have probably watched every ted talk available on the topic, not to mentions hundreds of youtube videos and read numerous articles and books. (You could say I have been ever, so slightly obsessed) My preoccupation with this topic was twofold.

1. I wanted to make sure I knew ALL the early warning signs and those red flags so that I would never allow myself to yet again get tangled up in a toxic relationship.
2. The more I learnt the more I could not help but feel like: Fucking hell!!! How much easier would my life have been, had I known all these traits and behaviours when I was younger. Why aren’t we taught this shit at school? I have to write about this! The world needs to be warned! (Delusions of Saint Gayle arising there!)

So I eventually started writing a post last year August, but I struggled. `The thoughts running through my head where largely unprolific:

a) I’m not a psychologist.

I’m not a psychologist!

I’m not a psychologist!

……(My neurotic angel was having a field day!) That foreboding feeling of dread about what other people might think if they felt like I was trying to diagnose people without any proper training! (Sigh! Good Lord, Neurotic Angel is bloody exhausting sometimes!)

b) I’m not a psychologist…HENCE I don’t have hundreds of case studies to draw from for my examples, all I have is experiences with people in my own life. I found it very difficult sharing personal stories about certain friends (even if they are now ex-friends). I would never knowingly want to cause anyone pain or embarrassment ever.

So feeling Stuck my half-written blog has been lying dormant for roughly 10 months now.

As I have written before I am a big believer in the power of our thoughts. What you think about/focus your attention on the most will ultimately become your reality. And what have I been marinating and soaking up through my pores for the last two bloody years? Narcissists! And I’m surprised that I landed up surrounded by them?

On the plus side, its as if the universe heard all my fears and decided to provide me with all the examples I could EVER possibly need to write my post. The message is loud and clear! Enough with the excuses already! Suck it up, write the dam post and move on already!

So, although I AM NOT a psychologist, my next post will be about Narcissism!

Lesson 3 : Embrace Impermanence and abandon all hope

A few weeks ago in my grapple to find some meaning in all of these experiences I found this quote by the Buddhist nun, Pema Chödrön, which subsequently lead me to buy her book “When things fall apart”.

In this book, she talks about an interesting Tibetan word:

Ye tang che which essentially means totally tired out, or exhaustively fed up. She goes on to describe this feeling of complete hopelessness and how Buddhists believe this to be the “beginning of the beginning”.

“ If we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. This is the first step on the path.”

Mmmmm deep stuff….she then goes on to say how abandoning hope could even be an affirmation that we could put on our refrigerator.

As someone who is a self-declared ‘hope junky’ and wrote a whole post on ‘Hopefulness’ 5 years ago, just before my 40th birthday, I will admit I had to take a deep breath. Give up hope? NEVER!!

The only problem was, the more I read, the more it made sense. It’s like this…being a hope junky means that no matter how hard life may get I have trained myself, over the last couple of years, to always bounce back into my consoling state of hopefulness. (Trust me I definitely wasn’t born a glass-half-full person! ) So, in essence, my hope became my anchor in the storms, a perpetual reminder that things can always get better. (Awesome!)

My hope junkie list includes:

Hope that I will one day make money from doing all the things that I love!

Hope that I will meet someone who I can eventually settle down with.

Hope that I will still get to have a family and experience being a mother myself. (Even if that means I have to adopt a house full of kids)

Hope that I will have lots more travel experiences in my life.

And hope that everything is always working out for me and that one day I will finally get it all together!

As I read on it dawned on me that the “finally getting it all together” belief is the most destructive lie I have ever told myself. I realised that the affirmation that has kept me going for the last two years:

Everything is always working out for me. Was based on the ‘hope’ that 2020, following on from a pretty awesome 2019 would be even BETTER!!! Surely with age wisdom and deeper awareness of who you are, life will get easier?

(Eish the arrogance of the ego!🙄)

Chödrön explains this beautifully when she says: (Apologies I am a literary magpie )

“We feel good about ourselves. We have finally tied up all the loose ends. We are happy. We think that that’s life. We think if we just meditated enough, or jogged enough or ate perfect food. Everything would be perfect. But seeking perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self-contained and comfortable is some kind of death. It doesn’t have any fresh air. We are killing the moment by controlling our experience. Doing this is setting ourself up for failure because sooner or later we’re going to have an experience that you can’t control. “

We lose our job, someone close to us dies, our car breaks down, our child gets sick, we get sick, we get sued, we argue with someone we love, someone steals our parking, we are hit by a pandemic, worldwide rioting persists …

So basically no matter who or where you are “Shit happens” (Obviously those are my words and not Chödrön’s) She does, however, go on to say how…

“Hope comes from a feeling that we lack something, from a sense of poverty. When we hold onto hope it robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what’s going on, but that there is something missing in us, and therefore something lacking in our world.”

By allowing myself to continually live in this perpetual state of hopefulness I was never actually just accepting who I was right now in this very moment. Even when my mother was dying in 2016, I clung to my hope like a life jacket. I won’t deny that there were times I did feel completely hopeless, but somewhere in a deep, remote part of my soul, I knew that the situation wasn’t going to be permanent. I accepted her death as a part of life and I knew that I just needed to get through it. The sadness and grief would pass and life would inevitably go on. I would even go so far as to say that in that situation beautiful hope was what got me through the whole experience. It served its purpose and it had its place. I always knew who I was when I had hope.

So in the midst of all the drama these last three months, there was that period where I eventually felt completely stripped of all hope and it felt gut-wrenching. Without it, I was desolate. What now? I had to come to the realization that hiding behind that palisade of hope, was a seemingly insurmountable amount of fear. I was petrified. Who/what would I be if I was able to project my happiness onto some future event or condition? What would happen if my path in life meant that none of the things on my hope list were to come true?

Would I be enough? Just as I am, right now?

It was a hard question to face. For a while there it felt like coming to terms with a life sentence and the resounding answer was a noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

This fear is something I have been fighting with for about 10 years now. I have this beautiful friend that is 76 years old who has never married. She is the most loving, caring and wonderful person. She was my mums best friend in those last few years and when my mum was dying she moved in with us so that she could help me. We have been through a lot together. I have over the last couple of years implored her desperately as to how she has managed to build her life and be completely happy without the marriage and kid’s package. The couple of times I have done this she has never really answered me…all she ever says is ‘Oh my child’ and looks at me with the most inordinate amount of love. I realized what I was asking her was ‘Will this fear ever go away?‘ I have come to understand that there is no way to answer that question. When you are ready to make peace with something….then you will. It really is that simple.

Of course, I didn’t realise that then, and Neurotic Angel got the joy of reminding me daily that I was a complete failure because, DESPITE all the hard work I have done on myself over the last 10 years when the shit hit the fan, I fell apart. Great!!

So what deep wisdom’s did I extract from all of this…..

I definitely decided that my addiction to ‘hope-morphine‘ has got to stop!! (So please null and void that 2015 blog post as I do believe I have changed my perspective on this matter! ) I have now decided that I am going to be a ‘presence’ junkie. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going completely cold turkey…..I’m simply going to keep my hope to a neutral level while focusing more on what makes me happy every single day. Like doing the things I love, writing, painting my rocks, reading, (Having a bath!) connecting with friends and being eternally grateful that during this bizarre time in our world I have so much free time to do these things. (To all my friends with kids…..console yourself with the fact that when you are retiring and having all that wonderful ‘me’ time I will probably be potty my training kids. See you feel better now don’t you!😁)

Secondly, I have come to realise, with a little help from the lovely Chödrön, to be fully alive and fully human and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. If I want to be whole and happy then I need to learn to see experiences that are ugly, problematic, painful, uncomfortable and unwanted as my teachers. By learning to honour my obstacle and accepting these experiences as a necessary part of life then perhaps I could start to develop compassion for myself, even if I do fall apart. Maybe that compassion will then naturally extend to others… making me a little more accepting and a little less judgmental.

Even as I write this I hear Neurotic Angel chiding me relentlessly...”You have learnt this lesson a hundred times over…when will it sink in?” So maybe my compassion will have to start with her…..Maybe I could accept her presence with love? She is after all just doing her job. Her very superfluous job which, in her mind, is to protect me from making a complete arse of myself. To prevent me from feeling pain or rejection. She has been doing it her whole life….so she is in all honestly probably never going to stop. Maybe all I can do is give her a hug and let her get on with things while I simply remind myself of a very powerful quote by author Glennon Doyle Melton.

Pain is not a hot potato it’s a travelling professor that knocks on every bodies door and the wise one says come in, sit down and don’t leave until you have taught me everything I need to know’

Epilogue

“Shiny, Happy things”

Oh my God!! I do believe I have actually made it to the end….(almost). For those of you who are still with me, you are all rockstars! 😁

So I have been working on this post for two hours almost every single day from the 20th of April. So that’s roughly ….um 90 hours (3.75 full days!) It has felt great to finally be writing again after so many months of feeling stuck, so thank you for sharing my journey with me.

As every good story always has a happy ending let me tell you mine! When I first applied to home-share last year I joked with the agent that she needed to find me a granny who lives in Little Venice. After 4 months of certain hell, I am finally settled in my new home….in no other than Little Venice!

My house is absolutely stunning. I have my own bathroom (Absolute luxury) and a DESK that looks out on the most beautiful victorian garden (that seems to go on forever.) Due to the Covid19, the rent has been cut down drastically, and I would never have been able to afford to live here under normal circumstances.

My flatmates, all guys, (2 Greek and 2 Italian) are absolutely amazing and so tidy. There honestly isn’t a dish or an overflowing dustbin insight anywhere, ever. They even baked me a cake for my birthday!😍 I was so touched. (Their mamas would be so proud!) I am eating healthily, meditating every day, keeping up with my journaling and have even managed to conquer my life long aversion to yoga.

I go for walks down by the canals almost every day and I am just in awe as to how beautiful it is here. The fact that I took on that full-time job at the beginning of the year means that my agency was able to put me onto the furlough scheme…so essentially I am being paid to do nothing. (If I had been a normal day to day supply teacher this would not have happened!) As a result, I have already managed to pay off half of my existing debt, so Phase 2 of ‘The plan” is still in motion. I have also finally decided to bite the bullet and start online teaching which I am really excited about. I start with my first child tomorrow.

I have honestly never been so happy, felt so grounded or had so much to be grateful for in my life before. Neurotic Angel is reminding me, of course, that I am now on anti-depressants so maybe I shouldn’t be so smug about my new found happiness. (Sometimes she is such a killjoy🥱). So I will ignore her and be proud of myself for recognising that I needed a little help, especially since I do feel so much less anxious on them. Surely, in the big scheme of things that is all that really matters?

So on reflection, I think that If I were to suddenly find myself staring in a sequel of the movie Groundhog Day and I had to live every day over and over and over again: if it was based on these last 3 weeks I truly feel like I could be happy and fulfilled. Rest assured I still have plenty of desires and hopes for my future. The only thing that has changed in that department is that ‘hope’ has been banned from the driver’s seat. She has been designated to the back seat where she can backseat drive as much as she like as long as she doesn’t let go of Neurotic Angel’s hand. ‘Fear’ has been acknowledged, accepted and relegated to the boot of the car, to be accessed at the appropriate times. If I want to keep growing, changing and having new experiences I will need to be willing to allow fear out…..and accept that she might get a little unruly and make sneaky, underhanded attempts to hijack the car. But I have faith that my new driver, Equanimity, who although still driving with her learners permit, will do her best to keep control of the vehicle while navigating around the potholes of life, that will inevitably come.

I think 45 is going to be a pretty awesome year!

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