I could be convinced it was summer

Posted On March 14, 2016

It’s one of those deceptively warm and sunny days in March that make you think it might be summer already. Then you get a bit too body-confident, go to a picnic in a see-through lace strap top and freeze your arse off. True story. Not from this year though.

I am having a weird time of things at the moment. I don’t really know why. I suppose March is always rough; my son’s birthday is this month and it would have been his thirteenth. Salt in the wounds was getting a fostering leaflet in the post from the council because we have a 2nd bedroom. It’s something I’d love to do, but not practical because we don’t have a car to get them to school or provide other experiences they need. My son should have always been in that bedroom and our lives should have been different.

But I don’t think that’s really what my weird mood is about this year. I don’t know what’s going on but I’m just really stressed and angry all the time and not coping with anything. All the agitation has started spilling over into psychosis episodes.

I can’t remember if I mentioned that a few weeks ago, something happened. Will went up to bed and I was going to join him a bit later after I finished with something on the computer. I wound up hearing a voice saying my name into my right ear and I just sat there rooted to the floor for ages. Eventually I got brave enough to call Will, and apparently he did respond a few times but I didn’t hear it. He had to come down and get me in the end.

Anyway, that was the scariest thing I’d experienced in a good while at the time and I didn’t really envision things getting any worse.

The other night Will wasn’t home and I was getting cleaning done. I’d been going about the house all day, and I kept finding the back door open. Not just the kitchen back door, but the wooden one in the lean-to as well. At first I thought, maybe Will forgot to close it before he left. But that doesn’t explain why, after finding it and bolting it, I found it open when I turned around again later on. It just kept happening, the bloody doors kept opening.

I started thinking that maybe somebody was in the house, or coming and going. I wasn’t sure how they’d have opened the lean-to door from the outside, but it seemed like somebody had. I thought that I surely would have known about it, or at least Freya would – she’d have wanted belly rubs from the stranger. As the day went on I became more convinced. The doors kept opening and some things moved. It was like somebody was always behind me, messing with stuff. I put the loud camping bells on Freya so I could hear better whereabouts she was and be more reassured.

The final straw came pretty much when I tried to hoover in the hallway. I’m not very good at using the Dyson, it’s so heavy and painful but at the moment it’s the only vacuum cleaner we’ve got and it needed doing. I went in the hall. I caned my way up to the front door, where the light switch is. I turned both the down and upstairs hall lights on, because I was wary of the possibility of someone being upstairs, plus I don’t have a good history of looking into an adjacent dark hallway and not getting worried about it.
Heading back, I saw a shape, possibly like the end of someone’s leg, disappearing round the banister at the top of the stairs. Promptly abandoned the idea of hoovering the hall.

Tried to do some on the dining floor, where at least my wheelchair moves easily, but I was doing short bursts due to the lack of carpet, and every time I turned the Dyson off, I thought I could hear somebody stop shuffling around above me because they had been using the noise as camouflage. Decided to stop touching the hoover altogether.

I’d left my cane in the doorway leading to the hall, because I use my chair across the dining room. Of course the back door was open again, so I went over to deal with that. As my back was turned in the kitchen, there was a loud crash. I turned around to see that my cane had fallen over, in the opposite direction to that which it was leaned, and further away than it seemed like it should have been if it had fallen. It was like somebody had pushed it over behind my back and then run off. Freya ran out of the lounge to look at it, and started looking around at stuff.

That was pretty much when I rooted myself to my chair in the dining room and started crying a lot. Freya was pricking her ears up at the stairs but refused to go up and check it out. This convinced me that someone menacing must have been up there, because the only person she hasn’t gravitated towards when they’ve been in our house, was our burly previous landlord.

I texted Will and he made his way home. I nearly called the police to tell them a man was in my house because I was utterly convinced and just sat there crying and crying.

Will got home, looked around and obviously couldn’t find anyone. Shame crying might feel worse than fear crying because you feel like such a dumbass. I got so worked up and cried so hard, nearly CALLED THE COPS and thought I was going to die for a while and there was literally nothing.

So I cried for ages more purely because I was so embarrassed that I had gone so wrong in life as to imagine a man in my house and ruin my partner’s evening.

I don’t know how the doors got open or if they ever really did. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe my brain hates me enough to tell my eyes they can see the doors open and tell my hands they can feel the door handle as I grab it and close the door. Even though I apparently wasn’t doing any of those things. Maybe my cane was never in a weird place. Maybe the dog was just having a nap the whole time and not even looking at things strangely or refusing to go up the stairs.
I’m not even convinced I did any cleaning, since it really looked like I hadn’t when I came down again the next day. Maybe it was all a dream.

Giving Freya a stroke.

Still happy to settle for a while.

One of the many piles of fluff I swept up. Every 5 minutes there’d be more fluff. I think she’s losing her winter coat.

Big snack layout.

Blackboard.

I wore a DIFFERENT NECKLACE.

Freya’s collar wound up upside down at some point apparently.

Had my Crufts party, was lovely to see the hounds, especially the Borzoi.

I’ve probably said before that it is hard to choose whether the Pastoral or the Gundogs are my most favourite breed group. I do love Shepherds of various varieties, but then English Setters are so gorgeous . . . and backwards and forwards etc etc.

Ol’ Yakee (whose day-to-day name is Eric, by the way, bless him) didn’t win the Best in Show but it was nice to see him again. If he did win I probably would have lost my shit because I am inexplicably obsessed with this stranger’s dog.

That shitlord won the FfL because apparently the Crufts audience don’t care about children literally dying without their medical alert dogs. It put a dampener on the evening because Scooby really needed the recognition and the money.

But aside from that it was nice to look at so many dogs. I didn’t really see too many incomprehensible dog names this year, actually.