fear and rent

At some point, a county court judgment was issued against me. This is never a good thing. I am fuzzy about the details, apparently it is to do with my most recent company paying me even after I quit. I never got around to calling them and telling them to stop, and eventually they stopped by themselves.  I figured they’d send me a letter and I’d make some arrangements to pay it back. To be honest, this was naieve and stupid. I should have called them up the second I realized what was happening. Except I had other, much more serious things on my mind. Every month they’d pay me, and I’d fret about it for a few days, and then I’d forget it, thinking that surely it was ok, they wouldn’t do it again the next month.

The payments stopped, I breathed a sigh of relief, and expected a letter to drop through the door. It did. I put it aside to deal with. Another letter dropped through the door a week or so later, I didn’t even open it. I put it aside and added a few exclamation marks to that item on my to do list. This was also a mistake. This turned out to be the letter telling me if I didn’t pay with them within seven days they were taking me to court. I then got the notification from the court, demanding payment in full or a defense. I panicked. I had no money to pay them, I had no access to a lawyer for advice. In the 7 days they gave me to reply, I did nothing.

The next time I heard about it was when a high court representative with a warrant was standing on my doorstep. Make me a significant payment, he said, or I will come in your house and take all your things. You can’t do that!, I said. I can, he said, I’ve got a warrant.

I had no choice but to pay him a large chunk of our rent money, £500 worth. Now, I can’t pay the rent. The landlord came over yesterday and wasn’t very nice about it. I told him I’d pay it by the end of the week, I hope I’ll be able to, but I’m not convinced. I’m worried about what will happen if I can’t pay. We’ve lived here two years, have always paid the rent on time and he is being a total prick about it. I’m terrified we will be evicted. What will we do? Where will we go?

I lay in bed last night, trying to calm myself by telling myself that the universe will provide. The money I’ve been waiting on for over a month will come in, we will pay the rent, everything will be fine. But when I checked my account this morning,still nothing. Still nothing. I push the fear down.

Part of me is in denial. How can this be happening? Surely, it isn’t happening. I am not facing eviction with my kids. I am not so dirt poor as this. This just can NOT be happening. Yet, it is. Because I made a stupid mistake. Because my husband made a bigger, stupider, more costly mistake years ago and lost his job now. This is happening.

I look around at our belongings and try to imagine what will happen to them. Will they go in boxes? Will we be able to afford a storage container for them or will my husbands family take them? Will we live in our car?  Will I lose my children? I am afraid. Every day, I am afraid. I am working as fast and as hard as I can to get my degree, so I can pull us out of this horrible hole, yet I can’t seem to work hard or fast enough. It is soul destroying, and more and more frequently I wonder if there is a point? I seem not to be able to do this, to manage this, to do anything properly. I should not be in this place. My kids should not have to live their lives under a cloud of uncertainty, which is invisible to them, but there all the same. I wonder what would happen if I died. My parents would take them in, or my siblings. Even my husbands parents would take him and them in while he got on his feet. They wouldn’t suffer or go into foster care. Perhaps they would even be better off, without me and my chronic fear and depression. My crying, and not being able to buy them anything they need.

This is stupid I know, I could never leave them like that, how horrible. But, in the depths of night, when I am terrified and gripped by self pity, it is sometimes the option that seems best for everyone.

I miss my counsellor, who is so good at making me realize how silly I’m being, at giving me perspective.

a great game of pretend.

We had an interim meeting about two months ago. All the professionals associated with our case were there, kids teachers, husbands offender manager, our social worker and her boss. The purpose was to decide what would happen next, whether my husband would come home.

I spent the entire meeting holding my shit together. Never once did I let a tear slip down a cheek, even when the details of my husbands crime were spoken out loud in front of the room. In front of the very people I needed desperately to believe, to know I am a good mother, fighting so hard for my children, my family, who has nothing but their welfare at heart. I did so well, laid out my “plans” for what I wanted to happen. Answered all their questions, looked them in the eye, even reassured my fucking husband when he faltered and couldn’t find the words. I even wrote a statement for him to read at the end.

I feel like everything is like this. I spend every minute trying to hold my shit together, just keeping on. Getting on with the business at hand.  When I finally was able to see a counsellor, I just cried and cried. sobbed. It was as if , finally, I could just let it out, with no judgement. No repercussions. I saw her six times. Each time, I sobbed. Not always exclusively about what my stupid husband did, sometimes even just about things in my past that were still holding me. It was the first time in my life I’ve been able to just let go like that. Which isn’t to say I never break down and cry or feel sorry for myself, I do. This was just different. It was  a controlled burn. I was starting to feel like even when I was feeling down, I could still just focus and carryon and not let it swallow me- because I’d see her on Wednesday, I could cry on Wednesday, I could let it swallow me on Wednesday.

I could only have  6 sessions with her. It’s now been a week and a half since my last session and I feel myself slipping. I can cry to my husband, to an extent. But if it’s about him, or what he did, or anything that even relates to that, I can’t. Becuase it makes him feel horrible, he retreats, he starts to cry and the guilt makes him feel like throwing himself off a bridge. So, I’m careful with him. I can’t unload to the social worker. She’s like a vulture. Poised, waiting for me to slip up, to fuck up so she can swoop in and carry my kids away. I don’t know why she’s like this. I don’t think I’ve done anything to make her  think badly of me. But, maybe she just thinks of me as the enemy, her concern is the kids, after all. Perhaps she thinks if she stops being a bitch long enough to actually feel for me,  she might miss some sort of horrible abuse I’m afflicting on my kids. Who knows- either way, I have to be careful with her. My mother, in addition to going through her own serious health concerns, has never really been interested in my problems. Her favorite thing to say when I’m upset, crying down the phone to her is ” ****, I can’t tell you what to do.” With an air of impatient annoyance. So, I go back to being encased in what feels like my own, cut off, little universe. Interacting through a strange film with the rest of the world, always feeling like nothing is quite real. If you met me, you might think I was a bit overweight. Though I’d be dressed in clean, matching clothes, possibly wearing makeup, I’d smile and say hello, or excuse me, or apologise if in my normal daily distractions I had run into you. If my kids were with me, you’d probably comment on how polite they were, you’d tell me how cute my littlest one is. I’d agree, offer some amusing remark about how it’s just an act, he’s really a terror, and we’d laugh and part ways. Underneath it, I’d be terrified. What if you thought I’d been rude to bump into you? What if you thought I was fat? Ugly? What if my kids were clamoring for ice cream- would you think I was a fatso who just fed her (very slim) kids junk? The self loathing would creep in. I’d be afraid to look at anyone. I’d just want to get out of there. Go home and hide.

This is the person I am now. I feel powerless, I have control over nothing. When things happen, I want nothing but to go to bed. To cry. Having a counselling session every week was helping with that, helping me feel more in control, giving me back some of the perspective I lost over the last year. Now, I feel like I’m falling backwards. Things are moving fast around me, I have to pretend to be in control of them, to be keeping up with them, to be guiding them. In reality I feel worse than ever. A year ago I couldn’t even look people in the eye, couldn’t speak to them, couldn’t even go into a sandwich shop and order without bursting into tears. I feel like I’m falling back into that. I’m beginning to think I’ll never be able to pull myself out of it again.

Level 0: Absolute Shit & what comes after that.

My counsellor doesn’t tell me what to do about the anxiety, the fear. She just says that I should spend a few minutes a day “grounding” myself. Checking in with my body, putting my feet on the floor, becoming aware of my breathing, figuring out how I feel. I suppose this is good advice, and it is something I do occasionally already. But, those few minutes a day might be nice at the time, but they won’t change anything. They arent going to stop me spending the rest of my time in a constant state of anxiety, fear about the future, and the present.

Next week is our final session, and I’m not sure I know exactly what I’ve accomplished with her. I suppose having a safe place to let out all my emotions has been good, but it’s only been a few weeks and I still feel as bad inside as before I started to go. I guess dealing with a lifetime worth of issues possibly takes a bit longer?

I worry so much, about everything. But, I’ve found this sort of midline- where I know that everything is absolute shit, but it’s a level of absolute shit that can be tolerated. It’s the lowest level, I think, but it can still be tolerated. When things dip below this level, I have a meltdown, I just can’t function. There is constant sobbing, and objects being thrown and accusations and cruel words can’t be kept to myself. I hate those times.

I wish I had some answers. I wish I knew how to stop feeling so anxious. I wish I knew how to stop myself from sobbing. How to keep myself from shovelling food in my mouth in an effort to keep the bad feelings away.  I was sobbing the other day, and it got so bad that I threw up. And then I made myself do it again. It was so horrible and disgusting but at the same time, it was a distraction. It was a moment where I couldn’t cry, where I couldn’t think, where it felt as if all the bad feelings in me were gone, as if I could just vomit them up. I haven’t done it again, haven’t felt quite that level of desperation and pain again. I wonder if I could do it again? I even wonder if it’s the answer to this horrible binge eating. If I comfort eat, and then force myself to throw up, can I at least stop from gaining more weight?   I hate thinking that. It must sound horrible, if I look at it from a different perspective (hell, my own from a year ago?), it seems stupid. But, really- right now, it seems completely logical.

I want to be happy, and relaxed. I’m afraid I will be this anxious, scared person the rest of my life. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for things to fall apart. I think this experience has profoundly changed the person I am. I will never be the same person, who just did things for the sake of doing them without fear or worry and didn’t give to much thought to what people thought of her, again. Now, I am cynical. I know that everyone has an ulterior motive, and they will screw me if they need to. I don’t trust. I know how people really are-  why they ask the questions they ask, or say certain things.

I am cynical, suspicious, perhaps even paranoid. I don’t like this new person, but she is part of me, now. I was never crazy about the old me, but I’d give almost anything to have her back.