I need to be somewhere else

Today has been utterly rubbish and I have accomplished next to zero work-wise which means I will need to work a day of the weekend. I am completely exhausted as I’ve not slept enough the past few nights and stayed up too late last night. My dreams have been intense and disturbed for the past 10 nights; trauma dreams running all night in one messy, emotionally charged tangle leaving me dissociated and done in before I even open my eyes.

And this evening I am at the limits of my coping capacities. I hurt. My brain is overloaded. My body is on edge. I just want to curl up in my pyjamas with a blanket but instead I have just had to go out in the cold to take Nina to swimming training and soon I need to go to the pet shop and supermarket, make packed lunches and sort the kitchen, before picking her up again at 8.45 (only to spend nearly an hour feeding her and chivvying her into the shower and up to bed).

I set really specific new moon intentions on Sunday evening around my house sale and the house we liked in the nearby village. I have been picturing us living in the house, happy and settled and safe, because I trust the Universe to give me what I send out energetically. Yet today I heard that a cash buyer has put an offer in on the house we liked in the village we want to be in, and my estate agent thinks I should drop the price of ours because we’ve had about 10 viewings in the past 2 weeks and no one has wanted to put an offer in. It’s long and boring but basically the house we liked was well under my maximum budget and it would have been okay to accept less on ours if we had been able to put an offer in there. Now it is gone. And there is nothing else at all suitable on the market at the moment because we are very limited in where we can move to because it needs to be in Nina’s school’s catchment area so that she gets the school bus, but it can’t be on my Mum’s side of the city. And it is very unlikely we will find something else with enough space that is not a stretch financially – we don’t need a bigger house really, just one that is laid out a little differently to give me space to work when Nina is home, and to give us more space too – something I really need because of my complex-PTSD symptoms. The house we liked was pretty small but I could have had a tiny study and we could have fitted a table in the kitchen so two downstairs rooms instead of the one we have now, and it had a pretty garden and was exactly where we want to be.

I am also massively in debt which I find really stressful, so I want to pay some off and put a bit in the bank for emergencies and other unforeseen stuff when we sell. Each month at the moment my debt is creeping up because of paying for therapy and I just want to clear some of it. And I want to move because living here is stressful – I worry all the time I will bump into my Mum, brother or someone they know and Nina can’t get the bus to school, only home, so I drive her up the road to a friend’s house every morning to get a lift in with her which takes me 30 minutes and then I cycle to work. So basically I leave the house at 8 and get to work at 9 despite it being only a 25 minute bike ride away. It is exhausting, especially as she swims 3 nights of the week and the other night I have therapy so the evenings are often a rush too. When we move it will be to a village with a school bus so she will be completely independent getting to and from school again, like she was for the last year of primary school, and she will move to a different swimming club with more convenient training times. Well, this was the plan. Who knows what will happen now… Another thing my trauma-deformed brain loves – uncertainty and unknowns. I’ve spent today desperately trying to get ‘things’ under control, looking at maps and bus routes and houses and money, even though part of me also knows that there is just no way of controlling things at the moment and I just need to wait and see what happens.

I just want to sell our house. I am desperate to move to the countryside, pay off a big chunk of debt, get a dog and make a fresh start. I am so in need of a new beginning, new people, a community, and to be somewhere I feel psychologically safe. The move is about so much more than where we are physically. It will be somewhere my Mum has never been and never goes. I know I am very lucky to have been able to get on the housing ladder, to have a roof over our heads at all, and I know that we always have enough money for food and essentials and nice things sometimes too, and I am very good at practicing gratitude for all these things every day. Today, though, it all just feels unfair – being a solo parent is HARD, so hard; I have to pay for everything out of one salary, I have to do all the driving around and everything at home, I have to sort out all the life admin stuff for two people myself, and there is no one to provide emotional support to me apart from K for 90 minutes each week. This week my new-to-me car broke and had to go back to the dealership so it has been a jumble of lifts and borrowed cars and extra stress. In the morning I need to drop Nina at 8, take my Dad’s neighbour’s car back, cycle to work and then collect another car from a friend on my way home before taking Nina to swimming for 6pm.

I saw the tiny sliver of new moon on the way home just now and it looked so beautiful and hopeful. I am trying so hard to stay present and trust that everything will work out the way it needs to, that we will get a buyer and a new house even better than that one will come on the market at the right time, but it is hard to trust and let things unfold as they need to when so much of my wellbeing seems to be dependent upon this move happening. And it is hard to keep reminding myself that therapy has been and continues to be a necessity, because ultimately it is the reason I am in debt and it is the reason we have a really low budget for a house. I know it’s not therapy to blame really, it’s things that happened long ago that I have had to feel and face and untangle, but it is galling to work as hard as I do and to be struggling and unable to live on my income because I am spending so much money on something I shouldn’t have needed in the first place. I am trying to let this go, to see the two as separate (the money for therapy and the house move) because the reality is I have needed therapy and probably would have lost my job without it, if not my life. It is pointless to fall into a place of being angry with myself for needing so much therapy and yet it is hard not to.