Monday 20 October 2003

This is not my beautiful life ...

We're house-sitting for Fifi and Magnum this week (from Saturday just gone by to next Saturday) and I reckon they're going to need knife and fork, crowbar, explosives and heat-seeking missiles to dislodge us.

I'm having difficulty articulating (um, even more difficulty than usual, that is) how amazingly wonderful it feels to have our "own" house again.  Living with the parents isn't easy, in fact it sucks.  Really truly sucks. 

My parents are also, in a word, LOUD.  Every verbal exchange from "pass the butter" to adult discussion is held at full volume and in argumentative tone.  Both Mum and Dad are overbearing and over-protective.  Mum in particular is a very loud, full-on, bullying and aggressive personality, so the two factors together equals this constant argument held at maximum decibels.

Location-wise their place is very pleasant indeed, near the river and nice walks, but its a long way from any shops, pubs, cafes; you know, life.  And the public transport is up the shit.  Given our non-driving, non-vehicular (aside from bicycles) status, this makes us feel pretty trapped and way isolated.

I've made an important discovery, though.  I have always had a rotten self esteem/image and now, finally, I know why.  My mother is never done telling me that I'm fat, I'm ugly, I am a truly horrible and thoughtless person, I never do anything to help, I should get my hair cut, I look awful etc etc etc. 

I honestly didn't notice how Mum grinds down my self esteem - Its funny, well strange, how you don't notice things when you're immersed in that same environment all the time.  And its not until you get out of that environment for a while that you see how things really are.  It took moving 15,000 kms away for me to notice what Mum does to me.  Slow learner, eh?

So all that is unpleasant and stress-inducing, and is a kind of unsubtle Chinese water torture, dripdripdrip on our nerves. 

So you can understand how trapped we feel at the parents; we can't escape and we can't entirely do our own thing and have people over, etc, either.  (We also can't have enthusiastic, noisy sex in every room and on every available surface, either.  Even in our own bedroom we - well, actually, its mostly I - have to keep quiet because sound carries, don't you know.)

Don't get the wrong impression though; I know I'm venting here but I do know how generous and amazingly supportive the parents are being, and they really are both fantastic, lovely people, its just that ... well, we are adults ourselves, and we're both used to having our own place, and so its a difficult situation to have to cope with.

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Fifi and Magnum's place is a really lovely little townhouse, in a complex of four.  They are all separate, no common walls, each with its own bit of garden/courtyard at the back and side and a covered parking space.  The house itself is three bedroom, two bathroom, with a loo upstairs and one downstairs.  It has a huge lounge/dining/living area and a compact but well planned kitchen, and a small but adequate laundry. 

Its also in a suburb that I've had my eye on for ages, as a possible place for us to find a place to rent when the time came.  Of course, while I know the area, Tuxedo doesn't, so this is a great opportunity for him to suss it out.  So far, he loves it for the same reasons I do.  There's a comprehensive shopping area within walking distance, with supermarket, butcher, post office, pharmacy, all that.  Plus it has a couple of cafes which all make great coffee, restaurants, a pub, bottle shop ("liquor store" to any USAns out there) and a cinema even, all along both sides of a street block.  The whole thing has a fantastic "village centre" to it, which I really like.  We're also still close to the river, and thus the freeway and bike path.

I really really like it here.  It is such a relief to not have to listen to aggro shouting and shrieking.   We're both so much more relaxed, and its lovely being able to do our own thing, sprawl about the place without getting criticised and attacked, and to be "just us".  It feels more like home than living with the parents, and I have to keep reminding myself that we're only house-sitting.  For a week.

This is not my beautiful house ...

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I've been whingeing a lot lately.  I'm not a natural whinger, although it probably seems as though I do little else but whine and groan but really truly I'm an optimistic person. I always have hope that things/circumstance/situations will work out eventually.  Even when life and living have been beyond horrific and I've been sunk in despair and depression, I've always had some hope.  Just a little.  Enough that I feel if I just hang on long enough I will get through this.  Also, that whining and being a pain in the arse to myself and everyone around me is counter-productive and not a good plan.

But yeah, lately I've been whingeing and moaning, feeling so incredibly pissed off, fed up, stressed out, you name it.  I am so very sick of feeling sick and tired and in extreme pain all the bloody time - even though I have improved a lot in the last months, incrementally speaking - and of being in this holding pattern.  Its like I've been in this holding pattern for about three years now, which isn't far off, really. 

I mean, in Belfast I was waiting for my visa to come through so I could start working, start meeting people and getting out of the house and earning money and not have to live off Tux - not that he ever ever made me feel bad for not contributing but we both know I'm an independent sort and wanted to pay my way, also more money would have meant being able to do more FUN stuff, maybe even have a holiday or something.  Oh, I wasn't just sitting in a heap doing nothing, believe me, I had my little projects going, I was busy planning our wedding for a while, and after that enjoying - nay, positively revelling in - marriage and my gorgeous boy.

But all the time I was waiting waiting for a total of eighteen months.  Thinking that maybe this week the visa would come through and Real, Grown Up Life could begin. 

I've been back in Western Australia for eight months and I'm still waiting.  Waiting for my health to improve enough so I can goddamn work already.  Waiting while we collected all the bits (forms, supporting documentation) and collated the horrible three-inch thick visa application, so he can start working and living.  Waiting for the time when both of us are earning money so we can move out, have our own place again, be properly together, have fun. 

So we are both mightily sick and tired of waiting and chafing at the bit, of being in this holding pattern created by a bunch of circumstances, none of which we had any control over (apart from, say, never getting together in the first place, which does not bear thinking about).  Waiting for life, after a three year stretch on pause, to fucking start already.

This is not my beautiful life ...

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