A place for things

Last year, when I had my psychotic episode and ended up in Tasmania, I was in the process of moving out of a one bedroom apartment in Footscray.

There were many good reasons for me to move out of that apartment. Items of washing of mine would go missing off the communal washing line. To begin with I suspected the wind was blowing them off, but even on still days I'd still find a pair of underwear gone or sometimes a t-shirt. I began to suspect the man who lived downstairs who had a habit of coming upstairs and knocking on my door when he was drunk. He seemed harmless enough but the frequent 11pm visits to offer me a biscuit or ask if I'd lost some pegs were a factor in my decision to move.

I woke up one morning and went downstairs to ride my bike only to find it had been dismantled. I also thought initially that the bike seat had been stolen until I found it discarded down the street. One of the most infuriating things was that my bike was locked up and there was another bike less than a metre away just leaning against the wall. Not that I would wish anybody's bike to be stolen or dismantled of course.

There was also the evening that my sister was driving me home and when she went to pull into the driveway, it was on fire. Somebody had poured something flammable down the driveway drain and then it had either intentionally or not been ignited. The firefighters seemed unsurprised by the event and in fact mentioned they'd put out another drain fire around the corner not long ago.

The final thing that made me realise I had to get out of that apartment was the night that someone came to my door and smashed all my potplants and then cracked eggs on my door. I was in the lounge room on the other side of a very flimsy window listening as the whole thing happened. I was terrified. I think this attack was definitely a factor in my later delusion that I was in danger and being persecuted, particularly as that reached fever point in that same lounge room only weeks later.

So I knew I had to move but it was a bad time for me to be looking for somewhere to live as everything in my life; work, relationships, health, was in flux. My aunt and uncle very kindly offered that I could stay with them temporarily and put my things in to storage. That was the beginning of November. I'm still at my aunt and uncle's and my things are still in storage.

This weekend I just retrieved the last few things that got scattered to various people's houses during and after my psychotic episode and I've put them in to storage too. I've brought my broken bike back to my aunt and uncle's and I'm planning on finally getting it fixed this week. It has made me really happy to have it back, even in the condition it's in, and I think part of that is purely because it's mine and I think my things belong with me.

It's hard going to my storage facility and seeing my furniture upended and stacked or boxes with 'books' or 'yellow kitchenware' written on the side in thick marker. I miss my things. I want to be amongst them. This longing, this homesickness of sorts has me scouring domain.com for apartments where I could house my things and myself, round the clock.

I know that I'm probably not quite ready emotionally or financially to be moving out but I'm hoping the day I will be ready is quite soon. Deciding on the circumstances of where my future home might be and what it might look like has been challenging.

I've been told repeatedly and unnecessarily that Footscray is out of the question. I know my family would love me to stay close to the south in the St Kilda/Elwood area but it's inconvenient for all my doctors appointments and for seeing all of my friends. My doctors practice in Clifton Hill and all of my friends live in the north so it would make sense to live over that way but nice one bedroom apartments are rare and the costs are prohibitive. I have toyed with the idea of not living alone but I would need to live with the right person and when I think of them existing, I can't imagine them wanting to live with someone like me with all my baggage.

This quandary is causing significant anxiety in my life right now. If I could somehow skip this bit and get to the bit where I'm living somewhere furnished with my things all around me I would be the happiest girl alive. It's funny, writing that, I just realised that I really will be so much happier once I am in that situation. No wonder I'm so anxious to get there.

In the meantime, I have a bike to reassemble and I'll enjoy riding it around the flat streets of Elwood. After all, I probably (hopefully) won't be here for much longer.