In the comment on yesterday's post, Bex asked how I'm doing in my new home. I hadn't even thought about that for ages, and when I did, well, meh.

I'm not in a liking frame of mind right now. I couldn't think of anything I like about living here beyond not getting knotted up with anxiety every time I use my car over whether I'll find a legal parking space. The garden has not yet become a pleasure as we're still waiting for the nesting birds to fuck off so we can have the hedges taken out. These hedges. They're on three sides of the back garden and have to go, obviously, but until they do we can't start on anything else. We will plant other, better, mixed hedging but the soil will need a lot of building up as these fuckers have sucked all the life out of it.

I'm going to be honest - I don't like living here much at all. I don't hate it with the same blind fury I did at first, because... well, there's no point. We had fuck all in the way of options. I couldn't stay in my flat because I couldn't pay the rent any more and the only rent I would have been able to afford would have been a room in someone else's house, sharing a kitchen and bathroom. This is the best we could get for the money we had. I couldn't hold down a job, even if I could get one, because of the weeping and the panic and the inability to hold trains of thought in real time, in real life for longer than a minute or two without having to have a lie-down after.

The next-door neighbours on both sides are OK. I apologised to the one whose teenage daughter kicked off about the smell of my spliff wafting into their living room a few weeks ago and she said not to worry, her daughter is 'very opinionated'. That family are a bit chaotic, in a different way to us, but more like us than the ones on the other side, who are right on top of everything, all clean and tidy and watered and trimmed. She's very friendly (the tidy one) and can talk all day. She stands on a chair to talk to me over the fence. Who can tell if I'll become friends with either of them? I can't be much of a friend right now to anyone. As for the rest of the neighbours, they all look the same to me. They all wear similar nondescript clothes, most of the blokes are plump, most of the women wear their hair in ponytails and so far I've not learned to identify a single face - I'm not sure on the teenage kids in the chaotic family either. I could be ignoring them on the street.

The house is shit. It's full of stupid sticking out bits and rooms with two small windows instead of one decent sized one, so there are no clear stretches of wall and finding a way to put furniture is tricky and tiresome and unsatisfactory. The kitchen seems a decent size (for UK) but has three doorways, so again, no wall space, not enough cupboards, not enough counter space. The plumbing is all fucked up too - another sudden, overnight leak from the bathroom through to the kitchen yesterday resulted in the kitchen light falling off and taking a chunk of ceiling down. It all just feels like shit.

I think it's because I don't care about the stupid fucking house. I am overwhelmed with wanting my daughter back. I've never wanted anything so much in my life and there's nothing I can do, she's almost gone and I CANNOT BEAR IT. But there it is, I have to bear it, but I can't be happy, or anything like happy. I just want to scream and kick things and make such a fuss that someone does something and brings her back, even if just for a bit. MS isn't meant to be like this. If it's going to kill you, you know that from the start, primary progressive - don't know how that would feel, but it's a real headfuck to have ten years of the version you're meant to die with, not of, and then sudden change and whoosh, she's almost gone. Her body may live on for years after her mind has stopped, but I'm not ready to contemplate that just yet, we haven't quite got there. She still smiles and laughs, in appropriate places, though the blank spaces in between grow longer. She's still recognisable as the spirit of my daughter, still there to be loved and I do love her, fiercely, unbearably. We all do. We are all broken now.

So. I just went and sat in the silent dark outside and smoked another bloody fag. There was a good post on facebook a while ago about grief, using the metaphor of a giant wave that sweeps you up and makes you feel as if you're drowning so that it's all you can do to just stay barely alive yourself. At first it's one big stormy sea but as time passes the waves spread out, though they can return at any time. That's what it's like for me. I'm back at sea right now.

This neighbourhood is dreary. There's nothing but 50s and 60s built houses for miles, apart from short rows of shops, mainly takeaway pizza places and seedy grocery stores. North of the main road is the downs, but that starts with a long, long hill which my legs can't manage so if I want to walk I have to drive first and then pay to park somewhere. There is a bus but it goes either to the out-of-town shopping centre or into the little town centre, but there's nothing of interest there either. The beach isn't too bad but I've only been in the water twice this whole summer. Once quite early, when I discovered my swimming costume was unwearably tight. It took me weeks to find one big enough and by then we'd arrived at a season of winds, so that the waves were too high for me - I nearly drowned in a rough sea a few years ago, caught in the undertow, continually being dragged underwater, unable to get out, unable to take a big enough breath when I had a moment on the surface, finally spewed onto the beach with all the blood drained out of my arms and legs, dead white they were and unable to move... so I respect the power of a big body of water and don't go in unless it feels safe. Since then we've only had one warm day without wind when I wasn't already booked to see ED or be at a festival elsewhere. Sigh.

Maybe it will be better when YD and co move out, who knows? They can't get their furniture till Wednesday, though we've emptied the storage unit down here and moved a lot of boxes about. She wants to make it nice for GS before he moves in. Enrolling at school has made it real for him, I think. He's always spent long summers with us, but this time it's permanent and his mum doesn't even say goodbye. I can't support them and myself much longer. I need someone to look after me for a bit, but there's no prospect of that, that I can see. Bloke is a fucking bloke and just freezes, staring at me, scared, until I tell him I'm fine, or give him precise instructions as to what I need. If you have to tell someone you'd like them to listen while you rant and weep, saying, 'oh, I know' and 'mmm' occasionally but mainly just fucking listening, by the time you've explained it for the millionth time you give up and think you might as well write it all down and post it on the internet for all the real life hugs you're gonna get.