The chain is complete

Today my parents found both a buyer for their house and a house to buy. Well, a bungalow. Tomorrow offers will be made and soon they should complete. There are only five vendors in the chain and this middle link is the last to be finalised.

If all goes smoothly, we will be moving just before Christmas. Of all doesn’t go smoothly, well, anything could happen.

I feel a very strange mix of emotions right now. Earlier, I just felt upset. It’s not that I’m particularly attached to this house that I grew up in, but more that I just couldn’t face the whole uncertainty of where I would end up. Obviously the decision of where to move is my parents?, not mine, but that lack of input, lack of control I suppose, really made me feel very fidgety.

The bungalow they have chosen is in a town called Verwood, which means it’s fairly near my brother and his family. (Why do I see increased baby-sitting duties on my horizon?) In reality, this means that I can walk to the shops and a very small library should I wish to.

That will be an improvement on this place, where walking anywhere involves taking your life in your hands, risking either mad land-owners with guns or fast moving lorries that will mow you down soon as look at you.

The new place has enough room for the various bits of office equipment we each have, although I’ll probably have to get rid of my filling cabinet and possibly my wardrobe. No biggie. Good job I didn’t unpack too much though – be less to pack up when it comes time to move.

I now don’t feel quite so unhappy as I did earlier today, in part because I had a very long talk to my Dad about a few things that have been bugging me lately. Just life in general stuff. We’re very similar, me and Dad, so he often sees things my way without me really needing to explain in too much detail.

At the root of my problem is, I think, a feeling of terrible impotence and emasculation. I’m a very self-reliant sort and when I lost my business and was forced to move back here I lost all my independence too. I rely on my parents for everything and, at 32, that is very hard for me to accept.

A good example is that various members of the Zoetrope.com community are meeting up in London on Thursday. I really wanted to go, but said that I couldn’t as I just don’t have the money. I mentioned it to Dad, who mentioned it to Mum and they’ve told me to go because they’ll pay for my train fair. That’s very nice of them and I’m grateful, but I shouldn’t have to be going cap in hand to my parents at my age for the money for an evening out.

You might tell me that I shouldn’t be so proud, but that’s just how I am. Exchanging favours is one thing, but begging is not my style.

It’s been hard enough to deal with having no job, no money, and no certainty in my future in terms of where I’m going to be living or what I’m going to be doing. But at least all that could be dealt with at some unspecified point in the future. Having suddenly to think about how I’d fit into this single room in a three bedroom bungalow, having to think about what else I can throw out, and having to think about it now really got to me. Gets to me.

There are just too many areas of uncertainty in my life at the moment – it’s very prickly and uncomfortable. There’s no way you can second guess your own future, and it’s not very much fun trying to. I’ve been trying to take positive actions to improve my lot – searching for jobs, doing this journalism course, working on scripts and films. Most of these things are long term, though. They might pan out, eventually, if I’m lucky, if I put enough hard work into them. There’s just no telling.

If a few of my problems would just resolve, even slightly, I think it would be easier. If I could get even just some hints as to what the fuck’s going on I wouldn’t feel so empty and frightened. I never have been a particularly patient person, and I find waiting for things to happen – nameless, shapeless things – to be very stressful and difficult.

Still, at least today I’ve done a chore that I’ve been putting off for the last month. Finally I have filled in the forms required to sue the arse off my ex-landlord, who has retained my deposit for some very spurious reasons. I shall be filing the case tomorrow and then that’s done.

I hope that the magistrate who considers it will find in my favour, and quickly, but I’ll have done all I can do and if they don’t I’ll have to live with that. But at least that particular unpleasantness will be over.

On the up side, this time round I’ve not suffered too badly from the depression that’s dogged me in the past. I’m grateful for that at least, even though some days the unwanted misery settles upon me, no matter what I try to do to shift it. That’s one benefit of having been through this kind of shit before – I can recognise the days when my brain’s all fucked up and just put them down to biochemistry and move on.

I don’t believe that you ever stop being a depressive – it’s a matter of biochemistry and not attitude – but you do learn to recognise it when it looms on the horizon and to take some sort of pre-emptive action to try to head it off at the pass. Some days that works. Some days it doesn’t. I’ve had some near misses in the last couple of years, some really grim moments when I thought that maybe the bad old days were back, but every time that I squeak through without losing it completely it’s to be seen as a little victory.

If I can get through all this without having again to resort to drugs then that will be a major proof that I can control it, it doesn’t control me.