Intrusive

[cosmolinguist]

Can't sleep. I'm so tired but my thoughts are racing. All about where everything will go in the new house.

Which seems ludicrous when it's all managed to fit in this little flat, but then, not ludicrous somehow because our standards are higher now. What I accepted in someplace we're renting I don't want to think I'll be putting up with for however long we live in this house (and for all Andrew's dad's hypotheticals -- "what if you're offered a job at four times the wages in London?"...well, Andrew wouldn't apply for a job in London because he hates London, he wouldn't accept it even if he were offered it because he hates London, and I'm not at all sure that we'd have any nicer a house even at four times the price in London! But, y'know, other than that...! -- and assurances that we can think about somewhere nicer in five years, we intend to live in this place a long time. So I don't want to spend all of it with books flung on shelves everywhere and so much clutter that most of our possessions are useless, things to be stepped around, compelling me to live my life in the corners they have left me, having overrun everywhere else.

I felt a bit better once I remembered we have a loft.

Which seemed just as ludicrous -- how could I have forgotten that? But then there are so many things I have to think about right now, and they're all whirling and jumbled in my head.

It probably doesn't help that the new house doesn't really feel like mine at all. So who cares if it has a loft, right? It's hard to wrap my head around it. I keep catching myself thinking the most inane things, like that the light in the basement isn't working and we're the only people who will figure out why. I'm used to being where the buck stops in so many areas of my life, but never before with where I live. I feel hopelessly out of my depth. Andrew and I went around flipping switches and seeing what they turned on or off, him dashing into the bathroom to hide behind a cupboard door and shout "yep, the light's on now!" when we were testing a hypothesis about what might be the switch for the boiler, and I thought Christ, I feel like a kid just playing.

It's been five years since we moved here, the longest I've lived anywhere since I left home at 18, and so I'd almost forgotten this sense I always seem to get when I move, that it feels like summer camp or something . In a week I'll go back to my old life. It's stupid, but I've always done it, since my first night in my freshman dorm.

Comments

[pseudomonas]

Good luck with it all! I hope you'll both be very happy in the new place!

[cosmolinguist]

Thank you. It's a nice place. I hope we will.

[haggis.livejournal.com]

Drive by comment but - you are not alone in this. Much sympathy and memories of doing/feeling exactly this.

[cosmolinguist]

Thanks for saying so. I didn't think I'd be alone, but it's nice to have that confirmed as it does feel very lonely, in a way.

[quuf.livejournal.com]

I feel hopelessly out of my depth.

If I were to design a personal coat-of-arms, this could serve as my motto.

Unholy writ (http://quuf.livejournal.com/19033.html), from almost ten years ago.

[cosmolinguist]

"performing the most basic activities there -- sleeping, eating, idling, bodily ablutions -- some in perfect isolation, some in happy accompaniment, most in nearly tidal repetition. The walls become a kind of disembodied skin, like the protective shell an insect builds with glandular secretions. Eventually, you inhabit yourself. That's home, or a home for now."

I think I'll be carrying these words around with me, in the next few weeks. Thanks for telling me about them.

[cosmolinguist]

I spent a chunk of this morning cleaning the kitchen of the new house, and I think that's helped it feel a little more like mine, too: I was a bit more familiar with the cupboards and corners, lights and shelves, the shape and feel of everything, by the end than i had been at the start.

[ejbigred.livejournal.com]

*hugs*
I have plans on Tuesday, Friday and saturday (daytime) this week, but i don't have any other firm plans for the rest of the week. So if you'd like help with the new place or someone to distract you from the stress just drop me a text.
*thinking of you* xxx

[cosmolinguist]

Thank you. How about today (Monday) or Wednesday? There's only one room that will need curtains after all, you can look at it if you like :) (and it's the spare bedroom that only looks out over the garden, so it isn't super-urgent or anything.