The
last few weeks have been filled with a great deal of change and they have had a
seriously corrosive effect on me. The
only thing that is currently getting me through it all is the fact that,
despite my earnest intention to never take on another cat, I adopted my parent’s
cat following her visit to stay with me while my parents were away on
holiday. Blossom is both a comfort and a
constant reminder that my beloved son and companion Merlin is gone as she is
very similar in appearance to Merlin given that they are from the same breed.
My
latest round of life-altering changes came about three or four weeks ago when,
finally, the local council offered my ex-wife a flat of her own so the enforced
living together that we have endured since our divorce came through has finally
come to an end. Not that the days
between Diana getting the flat and her actually moving in weren’t stressful as
there were moments when we thought the whole deal would fall through due to
financial worries on Diana’s part and the amount of time it took for most of
the furniture to be delivered to make the flat habitable.
Of
course, when Diana signed the tenancy agreement, the enormity of the hardship I
would be subjected to finally hit me as I became solely responsible for the
rent, Council Tax and all the bills for the flat that was our marital
home. It has been a long time since I
have been responsible for the financial affairs for the household being out of
work for so long with my mental health issues so I was unprepared for the huge
cost of living nowadays. I thought that
I was struggling before now but I realise that I was extremely lucky to have
shared expenses with Diana for so long during this extended period of enforced
joblessness. I will certainly look back
on the days of being able to order dinner from a takeaway every so often with a
certain nostalgic melancholy. My £100 a
week Employment and Support Allowance is eaten up within hours and I’m not
entirely sure that I’ll be able to cope.
It
seems ironic that the things I have tried to inform people about – how benefits
are too petty an income to live on and be expected to pay towards rent and
Council Tax and the injustice of the Bedroom Tax – have now become a reality
for me. Where once I could only imagine
the financial strain on someone on benefits, I am now facing a future of
personal experience of those issues.
Diana
finally moved out on Friday 27th May and I was left alone with my
new cat in a flat that now feels so empty.
Don’t get me wrong, it is certainly better for my relationship with
Diana but the situation I’m now in should have been with my beloved son Merlin
and not with a latecomer adopted daughter like Blossom. I do love Blossom but this future was one I
always envisaged to be mine and Merlin’s.
I’ve
kept myself busy with housework, watching the DVDs I bought to cope with Merlin’s
loss (something I can no longer afford to do so thank God for Blossom) and
doing stuff on the computer. It’s still
a state of affairs that, although something I’ve been wanting for ages, is hard
to cope with especially as it came just a matter of days before my birthday
last Monday which is always a time of great depression for me.
My
birthday depression is heightened now by the fact that the anniversary of Merlin’s
death comes less than a week later on 5th June and this year, being
the first anniversary, has been particularly hard and I found myself bursting
into tears from time to time and trying to get comforting hugs from Blossom who
is much more active and agile than you would expect from a cat coming up to her
10th birthday in a few months.
However,
despite all the sadness and stress of my new living situation, it has opened up
opportunities for new experiences such as my first attempt at cooking scrambled
eggs for breakfast. I know, it’s
shocking that a 45-year-old man hasn’t done scrambled eggs before but I only
had them when on holiday or Diana cooked them for me on special occasions so I’ve
never had the need to cook them for myself.
However, as I am trying to live within very restricted financial means
now, I have decided that scrambled eggs will be an integral part of my
shoestring catering repertoire. My first
attempt was not entirely successful as, despite seasoning the eggs with pepper,
they tasted of nothing and I probably over-cooked them as they were extremely
dry and not at all like the scrambled eggs I have had in the past but I will
persevere.
With
all the doom and gloom that surrounds me at the moment, there is a slight chink
of light which may offer some hope. A
couple of weeks ago I met a man who was interested in my ideas for running
mental health awareness training from a sufferer’s perspective (much like the
stuff I did for Anglia Ruskin University and Thurrock Council) and he seems to
think that I would be accepted for a grant of £500 towards starting up a social
enterprise delivering such training. Certainly
something to cheer me up if I was that easy to cheer up, knowing as I do how
fleeting such chinks of light can be.
I was
also introduced to a lady from Thurrock Council who helps social enterprises
get started who also seems to think that my ideas for mental health awareness
training could work and is currently looking into how she can help me break
into such a niche vocation.
If either
or both of these links pan out, I might one day be self-employed and on my way
to having a fulfilling life but there’s a part of me that can’t get over the
fact that I’ve been in a similar position before, where life looked as if it
was finally going to be a little brighter before the roof caved in on me and
left me so near to suicide it took the act of a stranger to save me from taking
my own life. While I will try to look at
the future in a positive light, I think I’ll wait until the other shoe drops
before I start to celebrate a positive change in fortunes.
