Movin' out

The mood in this house has been getting exceptionally ugly, just lately.

I've been living here for nearly eighteen months, now. I moved back into my parents' home back in 2009. I'd been in a car accident and - in quick succession - lost my job, my home and even my career. Suddenly, whiplash made it impossible to work as a massage therapist any more, so suddenly I wasn't able to call myself a professional. This probably doesn't seem too bad to a lot of people, but I worked very hard to gain that profession in the first place, so it was something that provided me with a genuine sense of accomplishment. Even more so after I received my diagnosis and realised that I'd had to work much harder than the other students to gain it. Then there was a year working at Glasgow Airport, nurturing my skills, followed by three years at a clinic in Glasgow, working incredibly hard for incredibly long hours to try and create a successful business.

And six minutes on the motorway in a stationary vehicle destroyed the whole lot of it.

You think I'm bitter? Mostly, I tend to be philosophical about it. Shit like that happens. But yeah... I have to confess... sometimes I do get exceptionally bitter about it. I try not to, but I can't help it.

I was a good therapist. At the airport one day - and this isn't a breach of client confidentiality, because I won't name any names - a girl came in for a ten minute massage. It went fine, with nothing particularly exciting about it. She went away happy. The following day, she was returning through the airport and she returned to me. And everything was different. As I worked on her neck that second time, I realised there was something very different about how it felt. I explored it carefully and came to the conclusion that one of her vertebrae had rotated. Something that sounds dramatic, but is probably a lot more mundane than people might think. I mentioned it to her while I worked on the muscles surrounding it and gradually relaxed them. She told me she had fallen from a horse a long time ago and ever since, once of her vertebrae had a habit of shifting - and whenever it did, she got blinding, devastating migraines. Eventually it would shift back and the migraines would fade. While she spoke, I was fascinated to actually feel the muscles of her neck slowly pull it back into place as I relaxed them. I don't know if I worked on her early enough to prevent the migraines or if they were already on the way, but I was definitely on a high that day.

I still do work on people occasionally. But no longer as a career. Now, if I do too much massage in the space of a single day, it hurts me too much - it aggravates the whiplash.

So... anyway... back to the main topic of this particular instalment of my AS story.

About a fortnight ago, my dad asked me - point-blank - why I was still staying with him. I explained that it was because I couldn't afford to move out without a job. The income from the hen nights is lucrative, but too intermittent to be reliable and I had just gone through three months without a single contract. He accepted that grudgingly, but his comments over the following weeks have become more and more cutting. More and more barbed.

Then yesterday, my mum's dog growled at him. Molly - a beautiful and very intelligent dog - felt threatened by his attitude and warned him off. I won't describe how he was going to respond, but I will say that I stepped between them, saying - literally - "nonononono", then took Molly by her collar and led her away. At this point I was actually a bit scared that either Molly would bite me, or that he would turn his anger against me, but I sort of defused the situation. Sort of.

Today, he's been snubbing Molly all day. She's very confused and clearly doesn't know how to respond. She'll approach him and he'll snap at her and she'll back off, looking very bewildered. He says he no longer trusts her and admits no responsibility for his actions. And the mood has been bleak. For most of this evening, my mum, my dad and I have shared the living room and nobody has said anything at all. It's like - since he came home from work - he's brought this oppressive atmosphere with him and it's weighing us all down. He watched football on TV, my mum read a book, then went to the dining room to play games on her PC and I watched downloaded episodes of "Fringe" on my laptop with the headphones on. Grim.

Last weekend and the weekend before, I went through to my cousin's place for the weekend. Both times, on my way home, I wished I was going back to an empty flat rather than a home I shared with other people. Not merely because I'm anti-social (which I am) but because I wanted to go to a living space that was mine, rather than one I simply resided in.

My bedroom - the room I pay rent for - is shared with stuff that isn't mine, but which takes up half the available space. It's not somewhere I can go to relax. (Although it's been worse - when I was fifteen years old, my dad decided to build a trailer. He welded the frame together, then seemed to get bored of the job. For at least a year, that trailer was stored in my bedroom and I actually had to climb over it to get to and from my bed.)

I've set myself a deadline. I have to be out of this house by the end of March. Now, that's a realistic aim. In the first weekend of the month alone, I'll make enough money to at least pay the first month's rent on a place in the city centre. I just have to make sure I can make the deposit as well - and then find some way to get past the credit check. I'm approaching the people at the AS support centre to see if they can think of ways round that.

Sadly, even that's not good enough for my dad. He's become aware that if I lower my standards and accept a place in Craigmillar or Gracemount or Niddrie instead, then I'll get a place through the council almost immediately - and he's putting pressure on me to do that instead. Why hold out for a decent place when I can get a shit place tomorrow? That's his logic. And he's starting to wear me down.

If I accept the shit place, though... well, then I'm stuck with it. So fuck that. Right up the arse.