Last night I spoke to my mum on the phone. She asked me how I was. I said not good. She asked why and I just said that I didn't feel that good. She said she was just about to eat so she'd call me back in an hour.
When the phone did go again, it was Gary who spoke to me. He asked me how I was too and again, I said crap. I was in no mood to hide my feelings from anyone. He said he might have something to cheer me up.
He told me that he had a friend who was renting out a house and that I could have one of the rooms in there. I just had to say yes. �55 a week and that incldues all of the utility bills too. It got me interested. He said that the guy who was renting it would be seeing Gary the next day and both Gary and my mum would go and have a look at it to see what it was like. I asked if I could go as well, but Gary said that he didn't know what time his mate would be coming to see him and that it could be anything from 9:30am to 3pm. I wanted to check the place out for myself so I decided that I'd go to town in the morning and just hang around for as long as it took until I could go and see the place with my mum and Gary.
Secondly, he wanted me to design another flyer for him or rather, he wanted something adding to the one I'd already designed. I said I wanted �50 for it. He seemed surprised. I was in no mood to justify my pricing and while I didn't say it, my tone of voice was that of "take it or leave it". This is how shit I was feeling. He agreed to my fee.
Last night I designed the flyer, but because all of my stuff, including my printer is in binbags, I couldn't print it out. It was about 5am at this point so I decided I'd have to print it out in the morning before I went to town.
This morning I awoke at 8am and while I did get dressed and find my printer, my head was aching and I was feeling ill. I decided that I would not be going to town afterall for 9:30am, but that I'd sleep until 10:30am and get into town for 11:30am. When I did wake up at 10:30am, I felt crap, but not as crap as I had done at 8am. And of course, one of the main reasons for me feeling so shit is that I have a psychopathic ex girlfriend who wants to sue me for writing in my own diary...
My mum called me as I was getting ready to go to town. It was 11am at this point. She said that Gary's mate would be meeting him in five minutes, but that he'd stick around for 30 minutes to allow me to get there. I told my mum I couldn't get there in 30 minutes and she suggested I take a cab. A cab into town costs �10, which I cannot afford. I think she's gotten used to living with Gary and being around money all of the time because when she asked me, she asked as if it was nothing and then was a little confused when I said I didn't have �10 to spend on a cab. She suggested I take some money from somewhere in the house though and I did.
Since I now had to get out of the house immediatly, it meant the flyer had to wait.
I got to Gary's warehouse at 11:35am, where he and my mum were waiting. The guy wasn't there, but after Gary telling Colin where about the house was, he gave me and my mum a lift there to check it out.
On the way my mum asked how I was feeling and I said awful and that I felt sick. I hadn't even had chance to eat. I felt both physically ill and very depressed, especially with recent events surrounding Claire.
When we got to the house, it looked...awful. It looked like a rundown small block of flats with an overgrown patch of grass outside and a very strange empty space. To get to the door, you had to walk up some stairs. By the time you get to the top of the stairs, you're fairly high up and this large empty space was directly below. The thing that was both strange and perhaps a little disturbing is that if anyone were to fall into it, there was no way out of it. No stairs, no door etc. I found it a little worrying.
After buzzing for entry, a guy let us in. He wasn't Gary's mate, but he was one of the guys working on the rooms and he showed us around.
It's weird how it's set up. As you enter the building, it looks a little like one of those block of apartments you see in an American movie. You know, a little on the dark side, looks quite old etc. Then you go up two flights of stairs to the first floor which is where the first apartment is situated, which houses five people.
From the outside, you'd think the inside would be horrible too, however, after being let into the apartment, it was quite a surprise. It was quite nice.
Five bedrooms, two toilets, kitchen and living room. While the bedrooms weren't as big as perhaps I might have liked them to be, I could certainly see myself living there. It was in the ideal place as well, as two minutes walk away, there's a huge supermarket, so I wouldn't have to worry about going shopping. In addition, college is a 20 minute bus ride away at most. It was the ideal place to live.
But as with any good thing, there are always catches and there were two in particular that may stop me from saying yes.
The first is that the guy wants �400 down as a deposit or in other words, two months rent and there will probably be a minimum lease of six months? I don't like the sound of that. I don't like the sound of moving in there and not having the option of moving back out if I don't like living there. It wouldn't be me paying the �400 either. My mum/Gary said they'd pay it and they'd also be the ones paying my rent. Again, another reason why it's a perfect place to move into, but not perfect enough that I'm willing to move in there without any sort of safety net. Would you?
Secondly and very very more importantly is Oogee.
As soon as I had put the phone down after talking to Gary last night, my thoughts turned to what would happen to my cat? It's not likely that I'd be able to take him with me as the way the building is, he wouldn't even be able to get in/out very easily and that's even if the landlord would allow pets to begin with.
I'm the only one who actually cares about him. My mum doesn't and neither does Laura so perhaps it should come as no surprise that my mum decided to quite bluntly say that I'd have to give him to the RSCPA without any feeling or consideration for the fact that while she may not, I do love him, as I've had him since he was six months old.
Me and my mum continued the discussion inside the warehouse. As ever, she just didn't understand my attachment to my cat and thought it was stupid that I was going to let him decide whether I moved into the apartment or not. But how can I just give him up? I love him as if he were a baby. How could I not wake up of a morning and like the fact that he's always there, sleeping at the end of my bed? How can I give up something that I've loved for so many years?
She just didn't get it though, since she doesn't feel anything. I asked Tony, one of the guys who works there what he thinks and I could tell that my mum was almost disgusted at the fact that I was trying to get someone elses opinion other than hers. While she may not have said it, you could tell from her face that she thought I was being stupid and even more stupid for asking for someone elses opinion.
I explained the sitation to Tony and he agreed that it's an incredibly tough decision to make and how he understood that if I've had him since he was a kitten then there's an unmistakable bond there. He understood.
However, he also gave some advice on if I did decide to give him up. He was saying about how the RSCPA would find him a good home and then he also said that they wouldn't put him down. That gave me nightmares for a few moments, the thought of someone putting Oogee to sleep. It's unthinkable.
All of this was happening while I was still feeling really really depressed and all I wanted to do was either break down in tears or shout in anger about how my mum didn't understand anything.
The conversation moved to the flyer. She said that since she/Gary was putting up the �400 deposit that I shouldn't charge Gary for it at all. I said no and she got angry. With what little strength I had left in me to start debating/arguing with her, I attempted to explain the futility in what she was asking.
I'm a graphic designer. While I may still only technically be a student, that does not mean that my profession hasn't already been selected by me. A designer is not a normal job, since if I work freelance, it's not like I have to go for a job interview and then suddenly I'm a graphic designer. I already am one. With this in mind, I tried to explain to my mum that this is my job and as such, I have to charge for the things that I design for people. "I don't think you realise what I do", I said. She on the other hand as usual hears what I say, but doesn't listen. "I don't think you realise what WE do", she said, which is neither here nor there as a response, is it?
I further explained to her that I need all of the money I can get, as I can just about afford to buy food and get to college. She asked if the �1000 she had given me a few months ago had been spent and I said that it had because it simply goes. All it goes on is food and college. Food and college. For the first time in around two years, I could actually afford to buy myself some new clothes with that money too.
Again, I felt angry inside at her for asking me if it had been spent. It's like she's completely forgotten about her life here in this house and now that she's around money on a daily basis, suddenly thinks that oh, well it must be that easy for me too. It's certainly not.
When she had told me to get a cab to town, I had taken whatever money was in the drawer as she told me to and when she asked for it, I held it out.
"How much is there?", she asked me.
"�50", I replied.
"Have it", she said. "That's for the damn flyer. But I want it done."
Again it's hard not to feel angry and annoyed. Annoyed because she felt that it was wrong to pay me for doing my job, yet with the help of that flyer, the business will make money. It also annoyed me that it was she who was paying me for the flyer and not Gary, when it's Gary who had asked me to design it. I'm sure that he and my mum had thought that I'd happily design it for free. Well no I fucking won't. I don't see why I should help Gary's business out for free when he's not the one who can only just afford to buy shopping every week.
I don't care if he/my mum is the one willing to pay the �400 deposit on the apartment. What good is an apartment if you can't afford everything that goes along with it?
Me and my mum walked to Gary's apartment together and as I did, I brought up the subject of Oogee again and I really didn't know what to do. I don't know if I could bring myself to give him up and as I said these words to my mum, I could feel a lump in my throat form and tears begin to collect just under my eyes. This was not only because I was scared of losing my cat, but also because of how shit I was feeling in general.
When we got to the apartment, we talked at the entrance for a moment or two. She asked me if I was ok and I said no and that I haven't been for a long time. At that moment, the tears began to fall and she asked me to come upstairs with her to the apartment which I did, where I sat down and just cried a lot. I didn't care that she was there to see it, I just couldn't hold it in anymore.
As I sat there sobbing and feeling my soul hurt so fucking much as it hasn't for perhaps two years, I couldn't help me notice that even though I was sat there hurting, she did not try to console me, but simply got on with cleaning the apartment. She talked to me as she did it, but to be sat there crying my eyes out and for her to just carry on cleaning up was perhaps one of the most hurtful things I've endured. She did sit down at one point next to me, but soon got up again after just 90 seconds.
I looked out of the window and though I was in so much pain, wondered was it too much to ask for some consolation from her. There is nothing that anyone could say or do to make me feel better at that moment in time, but the fact that she simply continued to clean up hurt so much.
After sitting there for around 20 minutes, still with tears in my eyes, I decided to go because I didn't want to sit there crying and have her do nothing. It was unbearable. I thought that I would rather cry on the streets that sit there.
As I got up to go, she asked if I wanted money to get a cab home instead of walking through town to get the train but through my tears I said no and left. She didn't try to stop me or offer any sort of last ditch attempt at comfort, but simply said goodbye to me, after I failed to do so and that was just another reason for me to keep on walking without looking back at her.
I wish to god that I was simply being melodramatic and exaggerating some of these details and making them out to be larger than life somehow...but this is truly what happened, much to my disbelief and pain.
As I walked down the flights of stairs to the exit, I passed a kid and his Dad who no doubtedly saw that I was crying. I tried to hide it and stop for a moment to pass them, but it's hard to stop crying when you're feeling so hurt inside.
I walked down the street, still with tears in my eyes, trying to control it and yet not wanting to. I really didn't care at that point that I was on a street full of people who could see me crying because that's the only thing that I wanted to do. Cry.
I found some steps to sit on and tried to calm myself down but all I could think about right there and then when how scared I was of losing Oogee if I choose to take the apartment and that just brought the tears back again.
A few people began walking past the steps where I was sitting and I didn't want to cry in front of people any more so I got up and moved somewhere else, finding a stone bench to sit on in the shadows of what was otherwise a warm, sunny day.
I sat there for another twenty minutes, looking at the people passing who could still see me, but only if they looked and even then it was just a passing glance. I know I probably looked stupid sitting there, but I had to.
Finally, I felt that I could walk through town and get home without upsetting myself too much more. On the train home, my head pounded with a headache. When I got home, Oogee greeted me, coming out of my room and down into the kitchen. I knelt down and stroked him, knowing that there was a possibility I may not be able to do that for much longer if I say yes to the apartment. I really don't think I could give him up.
I went to bed at 2pm and I woke up at 5pm feeling ill. As if I wanted to throw up. My head still hurt too. I couldn't even be bothered to sit in front of my computer so from 5pm until 11pm I sat in the living room watching TV.
My mum text me around 9pm saying something like "If I could help I would". I did appreciate that. However, it was only followed by her asking if I'd have the flyer done by Friday. I text back to her telling her she'd already told me she wanted it by Friday, twice and that she would have it by then.
It's coming up to 3am now and my head feels so very torn apart. I have Claire to worry about, my now full blown depression once again and a decision to make about the apartment. But I think I already know what the decision is.
I love my cat.
I'm thinking very seriously about going to my doctors and asking him to put me back on some anti depressants. I can't keep feeling like this. It's making me feel physically ill. I may also consider seeing a psychologist again, as talking does help. Typing just doesn't release the emotions that I need to release, even though I can document them as well as this long entry. I may contact James Riley to see what I would do about seeing a psychologist again.
Life just isn't enjoyable for me.
