Category: House and Home

On the move

Its a few weeks until the wedding but I am getting ready to move house, packing boxes to go over to our new flat. It feels as though I’ve been trying to get to this point for months and not making progress, through a combination of my exhaustion, my physical disabilities and mentally being unable to make decisions or forward plan. At last we are making progress! Thanks be to God!

The approaching deadline of our wedding is certainly a motivating factor. So is the fact that we are putting our home together in the new place (my fiancée has moved there already). We are blessed that our financial situation is better than it was and this means for the first time – first time ever for me and first time for years for my fiancé – we can actually choose some furniture we like and pieces which all match or coordinate, to make a calm and restful environment for us both. It’s somewhere we both want to be and feel thankful to be. For the first time it’s not a move that’s fleeing something, escaping somewhere, or because of a loss (death, broken relationship, having no money to live, for example). We are moving to start our married life together and that’s wonderful. That helps me keep going.

It has been very hard for me to tolerate the mess and chaos of packing. My threshold for feeling overwhelmed and having a meltdown is lower than usual. I’m trying to recognise that and actively spend mental time focusing on the good we have achieved so far and the good to come. Actively thinking about the good is much more effective for me than saying “just don’t think about it [the things panicking me]” “just push it away” “just don’t worry about that” “you just have to keep it simple and be positive”. (What exactly does that last one mean, anyway?). I can’t “just” stop a thought or feeling by choice, and the fact I can’t do that when other people require it is likely to make me feel even worse. But I can dedicate time to thinking of a positive future, however imaginary it may seem, or to counting tasks I’m thankful we have achieved.

Yesterday a friend of mine in the parish took lots of my surplus kitchen things and clothes to give to a poor family and some refugees arrived in the parish. They will be able to use some of my furniture as well, if we can find a way to transport it.

Tomorrow a lovely charity are coming to take away all kinds of other things I can donate or that need to be disposed of, and to help me pack because I can’t physically do it myself. This is amazing.

My cat doesn’t think it’s so amazing and is walking around with a very suspicious look on her face. She doesn’t like a lot of bustle or things being moved round the room. She’s alternately ever so affectionate, then moody and trying to scratch. I think she has lived in so many different homes before I adopted her that she thinks she will be left again – that the signs of moving mean I’m going to go away and abandon her. Poor puddy cat has attachment problems just like me! 🤣

We shall have to see if her mood improves once she realises there will be lots of cardboard boxes to hide in…

Ginny xxx

Picture by memecenter.com

“Music, sweet music, there’ll be music everywhere…”

It’s been a while since music has made me happy. Music is important for me. I don’t deal well with silence – something I’m trying to work on because it stems from trauma and what happens if I’m alone with my thoughts, my feelings and the voices. So when I’m home alone I tend to have either the TV on or music playing. Many songs help me get through the day by reflecting how I feel and even giving me some sense that someone is here who empathises. Others are effective at taking me away from the stresses I’m working through in reality. They may remind me of a good memory or something I like but more than this, they can be a super-highway into dissociation – not the scary dissociation but what I call the protective dissociation, where I can detach by becoming subsumed into one of my escape worlds.

It’s been a long time since music I’ve come across by chance has stirred up a simple feeling of happiness here and now. Today I was trying and failing to focus on work I want to prepare for seeing the psychologist tomorrow and on preparing a short talk I have to give on Friday. I was exhausted and my head couldn’t take anymore. It’s been a gruelling month. I decided to stop and do something else, a sort of example of the strategy “take the opposite action”. Feeling exhausted and overwhelmed I decided to act as if I were happy and in control of my life. I put on iTunes Dreamboats and Petticoats Diamond Edition – vintage and summery?! – and started cleaning my lounge of a week’s mess. After an hour or so it was as though a switch flicked in my brain and I started to feel mentally energised (if physically tired because of my disabilities and resultant muscle problems) and the panic receded. I hung out the laundry and actually felt happy for a little while.

Now I’m returning to my work for the psychologist and though I’m starting later than planned, at least I can use the boost the music gave me and actually face it.

Ginny xxx

Dancing in the Street by Martha and the Vandellas

Clearing out my flat and trying not to go out of my mind

I didn’t know it had been so long since my last post. Life is chaotic. Either I’ve been too low to write, dealing with flashbacks and triggers or scrambling madly to keep on top of more and more pressing demands.

Perhaps I’ve actually achieved quite a lot, with the unending support of my fiancé. We had to put in a “mandatory reconsideration request” with the DWP for his Personal Independence Payment (PIP), including a lot of extra information and details of everything they had got wrong in their report about him. This meant a huge amount of research and writing. In itself it was a daunting task. There were others we tackled this past fortnight too. Perhaps I should feel pleased we did it. Instead I just feel exhaustion, anxiety and upset (at the lies in the DWP’s report and the ramifications for us of his PIP being cut). If I could feel some sense of achievement I’d feel more thankful and encouraged; I’d see how God is leading us step by step. When despite hard work there is still a maze of uncertainty and upset and no conclusion to the situation – in this instance, we have to wait indefinitely to hear back from the DWP as there is no timeframe within which they have to respond – I find I can’t see what we have achieved. Even when others can and are optimistic.

This month several notably positive moments got lost in the anxiety and depression and desperate hamster-wheeling to meet deadlines. For instance I had a couple of great psychology sessions at the hospital. I need to take the time to build up from that.

Meanwhile as a way to try not to lose it completely I’ve been clearing through my flat – again – putting everything I can for sale this time. I haven’t sold as much as fast as I’d hoped but it’s better than nothing. At least it feels like I’m adding a little more to our savings for our future. Listing items for sale online takes more time than I’d expected, accounting for photographing, pricing, listing, checking postage and keeping on top of enquiries.

I signed up to eBay which I haven’t used for some years. It’s been helpful and I’ve sold a couple of things, as well as buying a couple of cheap smaller size clothes I needed as I’ve lost weight. However straight away I am faced by constant temptation to buy things I don’t need, or binge spend when I’m low. I’m worried what I might do if I shop on there when I’m “gone” (when I’m dissociating) and I spend impulsively, taking me back to the state I was in when I shopped and shopped and accumulated bags of things I didn’t recognise or recall buying. It would be worse to fall into this now when it’s not just me but my fiancé’s life that would be affected. I need to put some safety measures in place.

Ginny xxx

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree…

I’m going to start to put up the Christmas tree later. Usually I’d be looking forward to this. This year I’m not. I can’t seem to feel any excitement or happiness or hope. it’s very hard to get any creativity going even when I’ve been making presents for people. I feel guilty for not being joyful, as it feels ungrateful for the good people I have around me and most of all ungrateful for God’s gift of the Christ Child to us. Feelings can’t easily be changed but at least if I can’t feel I can try to do, so I’m going to make my preparations for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and do as many things I can to bring happiness to other people, completing each tiny task with love, out of thanks to God.

So, the tree is going up later. This will be the first time my cat sees the Christmas tree (I did have a foster cat staying with me last year but it was a different cat) so it remains to be seen will her reaction be. Will I find her half way up it or flinging the baubles across the room, I wonder? It’s an artificial tree so hopefully the appeal won’t be as strong as if it were a real tree. Just as well I don’t have a puppy, where this might be the result:

(Not my cartoon – I just stumbled across it and I’m afraid I don’t know who the artist is!)

When do / did you put up your tree?

Ginny xxx

House clearance

The house clearance turned out to be more emotional than I expected. The small local firm that did it were very good. Three guys came in a big van and 2 hours later I was looking at my emptied home. Unfortunately I was also looking at the large patch of hairball sick the cat had left under the bed without my knowledge which the workmen politely didn’t mention. Guess I can always hope they thought it was an unusual pattern in the carpet?! Actually I felt utterly disgusted. How badly had I been living that I could be unaware of a pile of cat sick?! That the damp in the bedroom had taken hold on even the one piece of furniture in that room I wanted to keep?

Clearing through my possessions in the days before the workmen came, as well as the hairball incident, left me with a question. How could I have let my home fill with clutter and hoarding, yet despite this frighteningly surging tide of possessions, I am still without certain much needed items? So many things incomplete? For example, though I’ve been over 2 years in my flat, I have not got the painting done and the walls are still patchy and stained just as they were when I moved in. The same shelves are broken in the cupboards, just as the day I moved in. I still don’t have a table to eat at. Yet I had 14 nail polishes pretty much untouched, baskets of broken jewellery, pieces of ripped paper I might supposedly use in a craft project one day, clothes stuffed tight in cupboards (shamefully hidden and many of them purchased in dissociative or irrational episodes for an identity other than “me”), and cluttering nick nacks covered in a film of dust.

My head was full with disgust at myself, confusion, failure, not knowing who I was. Who, what part of me, unquenchably acquired all these things? I am wholly responsible for it, but frighteningly out of control and unable to connect with who or why.

***

The neighbours must have thought I was moving out with all the bustle.

Despite the exhaustion and disgust I am gradually starting to see that this is a new start. My home is emptier. It is different now. The furniture I have left is not broken. It matches together as much as I can manage. Surfaces are no longer jam-packed. I can see space and calm and bit by bit I am attaining some of the mental quiet I so desperately need and I have been trying to achieve.

This is going to be a home I can make good for my fiancé and I; when we get married please God next autumn our home will be my flat. He has not had a home of his own, at least not one where he feels safe, for a long time. It needs to be different now for both of us. I need to look forward.

Ginny xxx

All in boxes

House clearance day has arrived. I’m waiting for the clearance firm to get here. My anxiety is going through the roof right now (well at least there’ll be more space to get the old sofa out if it does 😜). On the one hand I’m dreading it and very nervous. On the other I’m relieved we are finally doing this and excited that my home will be emptier and calmer.

I’m not sure exactly what it is I’m nervous for, or what I’m dreading. Maybe it’s because I’m coming face to face with how I haven’t coped and the effects of my mental illnesses’ symptoms; coming face to face with the fact I couldn’t do this on my own.

I’m trying to focus on being excited. Recently I saw a documentary about stress which said that a lot of the same chemicals are released in the brain and body when we are excited as when we are nervous. How our brain interprets these biological changes has an impact on whether we feel excited in a positive way, or stressed / nervous. So when we feel nervous about an event, if we tell ourselves we are excited, this may be able to change how we feel to a more positive experience. I’m not sure if this is correct but I’m going to give it a go!

Ginny xxx

House clearance

(So I just wrote this, pressed publish, got confirmation it was published but then it vanished. Aargh. Here we go again. Apologies if it has only vanished for me and you can still see it, in which case this is duplication!)

I’ve just had a house clearance firm come to give me a quote. Years of hoarding, clutter, old and broken furniture, cupboards of near useless and unnecessary items, have all got too much. I’ve tried and failed repeatedly to get through it myself and with my partner R’s amazing help. We can’t manage it. As my physical health has got worse, I can’t manage day to day or keep on top of housework and daily living like this. It’s no nice place for R to spend time either (we are not living together but of course he comes here most days). So it’s time to change this. I got the quote (yikes £££) today and next week it’ll be done. I feel intensely guilty and anxious but also desperate for the resolution.

Ginny xxx

Exhausted unrest

I am very frustrated that basic activities are taking so much of my strength and taking a massive amount of planning.

Just going out is exhausting. I’m desperately needing more time to rest physically. Also, desperately wanting more time to properly order my home and take care of it. I have had a constant stream of appointments and commitments that I’m struggling through, feeling more and more frustrated by exhaustion, mobility problems, pain I can’t cope with, and anger with myself and unrest about my home being disordered and messy.

There are a couple of friends I really want to spend time with or do things for. I’m scared of taking from others and not giving back. Yet meeting someone, or going to their house, or cooking a meal for them, totally wipe me put afterwards for days after. I think that’s through a mixture of my pain and pushing myself too far physically, and my anxiety and the voices and feeling overwhelmed in a sensory way. Talking, others’ emotions, noise, new places, everything happening around me, can be just too much coming in to cope. Sometimes I think I have sensory processing disorder or at least sensory processing difficulties!

All this leads to despair, being cut off, and being unable to give thanks or try to open my heart to learn gratitude. I need to make a change. I don’t know what.

Ginny xxx

Miaow!

My houseguest would like to say hi:

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So, here I was reading up and planning to have guinea pigs, when this adorable guy arrived. He’s been a regular fixture for many weeks now since he first “dropped in” at the end of last year but I don’t think I’ve introduced him on my blog before.

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He has previously belonged to at least 2 other households in my block. He’s getting on in years for a cat – we think he’s about 10 years old – but he can still cause enough mischief, between naps that is! I started out agreeing to look after him and feed him over a weekend in the winter, when his owners had serious problems and couldn’t look after him. Circumstances were such that they didn’t collect him after the weekend. They didn’t come back for a fortnight and by this time he was growing used to my flat and, I think, to more regular food and playtimes than he’d been getting.

We have come to an arrangement where I am the main person to feed him and look after him but he goes between my flat and is previous / other home. The couple that had him before are still in difficulties and can’t care for him. So it helps us all, I hope.

I love him. He’s surprisingly affectionate. He loves cuddles. He loves playing with his toy mouse. He usually likes being combed. He even “holds hands” tapping me gently with his paw then letting me take it in my hand.

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He is enchanting to watch when he’s napping, curled up so comfortably and trustingly on the seat beside me, or even in my arms, purring softly, then snoring not so softly, body rising and falling with his breath, smiling (yes really), little pink paw pads uncurling as he stretches out from time to time.

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He is bringing me lots of happiness and I love that I can care for him and make him feel safe.

Ginny Xxx

 

I don’t remember why – the guilt of my dissociative episodes

It is scary sorting through piles of possessions I do not remember buying.

As part of my recovery work I’m allocating time to take care of my home, household related tasks (bills, organisation, housework etc), in order to take responsibility for living an ordered life, to not get into trouble or overwhelmed with unpaid bills and tasks ignored until they become insurmountable, and to make a safe calm and even beautiful home. I had no home for many years, moving from room to room, moves often prompted by my mounting distress. When I was blessed to find this place, it took a long time to feel at all safe or dare to believe in any stability. Then gradually, it became an escape, flight not by constantly moving around but by means of a protective enclosure. Which is good in some ways and something I still need when things are too much, which is frequent, but now it is time for my home to be more than that; even a place and a life that supports my health.

Part of this is continuing what I’ve been trying to do for some time, which is clearing through accumulated items and clutter and organising the things I decide I do need. I’ve been working on this for some weeks or months on and off, tackling different areas. I’ve acknowledged for several months in therapy and with my support worker how I bought and accumulated items as a desperate attempt at escape, distraction and protection. I acknowledge how out of control my spending used to be and too often still is and how impulsively I buy things when in my dissociative episodes, apparently driven by some desperate need at the time that leaves me sick at myself and painfully empty afterwards when my consciousness returns, a massive blank missing in my memory and emotion, but the fallout of my actions apparent – money spent, arguments had, horrific things said, tablets taken, sometimes alcohol drunk and most of all items bought (usually clothes, makeup, accessories, things I’d never buy for myself “normally” or rationally). I hate myself then, most of all for the money spent on myself and the hurt I’ve caused other people.

I’m coming face to face with all this as I’m clearing through hoarded possessions. Much as I’ve been aware of and fighting these problems for months, it’s still very scary finding things I don’t remember purchasing and don’t know why I have. Perhaps it’s even scarier because I don’t really know why I do this when I’m dissociated. Why? Why do I buy things? Why do I become what the evidence means I am in these times – selfish, irrational, irresponsible, needy, childish, bad? What else am I doing in these times? The violent emotion that takes over and hurts people around me, but still I can’t control it – who am I and where is it leading? Why do I behave in ways I can’t remember, that people close to me say are terrible?

I’m scared. I want to take responsibility. I’m trying to carry on gradually sorting out my home. It occurs to me whether looking at items I bought in these dissociative states where there are huge memory gaps, will help me connect at all with what I was doing and who I was at these times. I don’t know.

Ginny xxx