With a slight nod to the Panic! At the Disco album A Fever You Can't Sweat Out and me Googling what Esteban they could be referring to, I'm going to instead say thank God doctors still prescribe Valium for panic disorders, because I'm not sure I will get through the next few days or would have got through the last few weeks, without it. The last time I took it, I also needed one of my American Advil PM tablets to sleep and it made me wonder why some of the best pills in the world are little blue ones. No one around me got the joke. Maybe they're all too young, even though they're older than me...
Anyway, I'm currently on a train racing back to London and having to convince myself to do things now, because I work well on trains, when they're not hellishly busy, of course, and on the return journey, I'll be in the front of the van with my parents, so there will be no complimentary wifi and no desk to work on, so it will be a long trip not just because of the distance we need to cover. London to Manchester by car or van is not my favourite trip, but it's necessary at the moment.
Pre-pandemic, it made sense to be spending around half of my wages on rent. When I think of everything that was to cover my job and living in London, we're probably more like sixty-five percent of what I earn in a month. I was still saving towards one day owning a flat, but it wasn't something that was going to be happening any time soon.
During the lockdown, I moved back in with my parents, and even though I've bought things like some new clothes (and shoes) from Marks and Spencer and materials for making masks, plus buttons to finish off some projects my grandma has been working on for me, I've still managed to save a hefty chunk more per month towards the flat, so the decision was made to just move back in with my parents for the next x amount of months. We're thinking it will be about twelve months, but that's not fixed or anything. I'm still going to be paying rent, which is one a storage facility, but it's a hell of a lot less than I have been paying out for the flat, so that works out pretty well.
One of the problems, the biggest problem, the only problem, I'm not really sure what to term it, but a problem of great magnitude is that I get stressed by moving. I know everyone does, but I was on the brink of tears packing my books into boxes because the idea of having to move them is not comfortable and the idea that I have to store them isn't great and the thought that some of my things may end up damaged, well, that's just horrible. My mum and dad are also pretty stressed out about the move, though less about me moving in and more the physical process of driving down to London, picking up all of my stuff and then driving it back to unload into a storage facility before taking the van home and dropping it back off the next morning. I think that no one is really happy about being away from our dogs for a few days, as well, least of all him.
Thankfully, I've called in the cavalry in the form of moving men to help get everything out of the flat and down to the van and then when we get to the storage center, it's all just got to go to a unit on the ground floor and they have trolleys, etc for getting it there. Granted, the boxes will need to be stacked and we need to be careful about what's in them, etc and the glass stuff so that it doesn't get broken, but for the most part, it's a pretty simple plan and one which doesn't leave my stuff in a van overnight with the possibility of being driven away never to be seen again. I'm not dark and cynical, honestly. I just have anxiety and am prone to panic attacks.
So my job over the next few days is get rid of a few last things and then finish packing the last bits into boxes etc and clean down the flat ready for handing the keys back at the beginning of September, but the move needed to happen earlier because I can't drive a car, let alone a van, and even if I could there was no way we were going to be able to do this just between me and my mum and a removal service all of that way would have been expensive as hell, so my dad needed to be off work which he currently is. It's going to feel like a long old task, but at least if I get it over and done with now, I can draw a line under it and focus on things like colour schemes for my next place, which I have found is a good distraction tool to keep away from the idea that I'm here for a year and everything is a lot right now. If I can make myself focus on what will come out of this then I can calm myself down, mostly, and for the rest of the time, there's valium.
No comments:
Post a Comment