Safe

I've entered a somewhat inexplicable stage of anger.

This morning as I was feeding the town of vincent their extortionate parking fee my mind was ticking over imagined conversations with M ... that went something like this:

"I'm moving out because I no longer feel safe with you" says I...

And the word safe triggered a memory of Dale.

I am lying in my narrow little bed in Budapest, probably tipsy, with the mobile clamped to my ear and tears making little tracks down my face.
He is saying "I feel safe with you" when all I want him to say is "I love you."

But I get it now. Safety is equally important. I don't know what safety meant to him then, but I'm warmly glad that he felt it with me. After all, M and I can love each other all we want if we can't live together and make a shared life based on security.

And being dependent has nothing to do with money. I was watering my garden this morning and the zucchini flowers opened overnight and the beetroot is standing a little bit taller and and and... and I thought that I have done more to make that fucking house a home than all his money has.

is it tonight yet? I really really REALLY want to get this sorted.

I am as a madwoman... swinging from one state of mind to another.
Should I move out? Should I stay put? What would be better?

I hate to give creepy Pierre any credit, but what he said the day I left Wray Av with my heart in pieces was true. I have to make my own bubble. Perhaps I can only live with M properly once this becomes our home and not his house. But I don't know.

The apartments I have seen... the first one in Mosman Park last Friday - entrance under the staircase, dank, dark blue lino like Frankfurt airport and pokey. Just awful. Then yesterday I went to Mt Lawley, thinking better thoughts - they promised Perth views from the balcony. About which they did not life, but they hadn't mentioned the stained carpet, the broken mirrors in the bathroom and the smell. But when pushed, I can picture myself in any of these places. I know I can make any room a home.

But the thought of starting all over again.... and then the random uninvited thoughts assail me:
I'll never go to Mark's fruit and veg shop again and feel like a local who belongs, I won't hang our clothes on the hill's hoist, I won't train with Cara anymore, or go to the spinclass held by the Turnbull-Hughesy lookalike...
My routine will be broken. But then I berate myself: these are fixable things. This is not the end of the world.

And then I talk to him, and all my rationality (not that there's a great deal there to begin with) disappears as if by magic and all I want is M home and for this to be good again. And healthy.
I am paralysed by this incredibly heavy apathy- I've basically done FA at home these last couple of days. Thank god for TV and trashy literature, though perhaps I shouldn't be so quick to condemn Stieg Larsson to that category. It was certainly a page turner, but no Winton or White...

I watered the garden today (it's our day) and the flowers at the front I planted last Thursday are starting to lift their heat-abused heads. Slowly, hope blossoms.

Someone said to me today: "Why don't you move to Melbourne?"
And why don't I? Because despite 90% of my loved ones living there, and the life being wonderful and colourful and askew and crazy, and the availability of a good pisco sour (good? the best) and all that... my soul has never felt as at home as it does here. And yeah, sometimes I'm desperately fucking lonely, but this was my choosing, and I don't regret settling here, not for a millisecond.

And Kym invited me to barbecue brunch with them on Australia Day, so I can spend it with Aussies, and then maybe slink off to King's Park with a good book and wait with childish excitement for the sky over Perth to explode in a somewhat commercial commemoration of our glorious way of life.

And in this topsy turvy world, ignoring said glorious way of life, Queensland is suffering terribly. If only we could share the rain, equally dole it out, state by state.

The sun has crept down, leaving the wash of colour I ached for when I lived in Europe.
Mindenhol jo, de a legjobb otthon dad always said. It's good everywhere, but it's best to be home.

Today

Today is a day full of sadness. Prickling regret at one fly away, ill-thought unplanned lie that has torched the security of all the solid aspects of my life. How is it possible that with one sentence the notion of 'home' has turned to rubble, small pebbles, small enough to patter roughly through my open fingers...

I am aghast at myself, at things in general, at how fast it can all change.

How the one thing i want the most - to belong, to have a home - continues to elude me.