I know that it will get better, but right now it feels catastrophic.
Long story so I'm grateful if you make it all the way through.
I'm a single mum to a toddler who is three in May.
We had a two bedroom ground floor flat which the council moved us into two years ago, from freezing cold emergency accomodation, when I fled her abusive father in The USA, and a chaotic living situation in a shelter there.
The flat was lovely. Spacious, very warm, light and quiet. However, the council moved us into it without carpets (concrete floor), curtain poles and undecorated and I had no furniture. The second bedroom was a box room and had damp and cold and I felt like I couldn't be there forever, as DD got bigger.
With a clingy breastfeeding baby who wouldn't be put down, I managed to get some things sorted, like a mattress and I used my £500 maternity grant to get carpets, which was very lucky, and social services got me an oven. I managed to get funding for a fridge and washing machine. A few people gave me second hand things like a TV, sofas some drawers.
About a year after moving in, some relatives put some curtain poles up for me and I was able to have curtains and privacy. They painted three of the rooms for me and the rest were in a bad state. It was really tough because of my daughter's clinginess I couldn't get anything done myself and just had to wait for people to be available.
I started to feel settled in the home but the area was also quite desolate. Only one tiny shop that was open until 5pm or 2pm depending on different times of the year and not much in there except ready meals and sweets. I don't drive, and it was atop a hill. Some of the neighbours were outside fighting quite a bit and the whole thing started weighing on me to the point where even as my daughter became more independent, I ran out of energy to decorate the rest of the house and it started to lead me into a hole of depression. I didn't have a single friend there and my local family would only pop by once every couple of weeks or once every few weeks. The buses to go anywhere to see anyone local were about 7.40 return or 4.50 return depending on if I crossed a town threshold.
I joined houseswapper to see if anything closer to relatives came up.
Eventually something did come up where I was contacted but it was in a completely different part of the county, but it was also the city I went to university in and had felt happy in years ago.
I viewed the house and it seemed great and I agreed to swap. It didn't need decorating, other than to put my own touch to it. (The first flat had dark brown walls in the corridor and walls with dirt and patchy different paint colours all over them and lots of holes in the wall). The second bedroom was a lot bigger, and it had more space for toys, which used to drive me a bit insane.
It just seemed to make sense, as my local relatives near the flat weren't making an effort, and I have friends in the new city, and it's a younger median age, so I'd meet more new people on my wavelength, and it had a farm shop nearby so I could get groceries easier. I just felt isolated and cut off from shops in the old flat.
(Sorry a lot of backstory, just wanted to share the details properly).
However, I still felt settled in the flat, despite the isolation, dodgy neighbours, depression and decorating I needed to do. I felt like all the effort I had put into it, meant something and that it could grow into something better if I gave it time and patience. If I could find a job to get a car and get about more , or if I just accepted the lack of socialising.
I decided to go ahead with the move, as the couple seemed desperate to get out of their house, due to disability and the stairs, and they also offered me a grand towards the cost of moving and decorating, so it seemed sensible to move to a better area for the long term.
They put pressure on me to move before Christmas, despite me not wanting to. I wanted to enjoy Christmas as my DD was getting older and more aware and have enough time to take my time with the packing and cleaning, and to be able to find a nursery as well, as the local one to the new house was full. However, she kicked up such a fuss Ä° thought Ä° might lose my grand, and Ä° gave in.
With a lot of stress and take aways and late nights, I got everything ready by Friday evening and had my van scheduled for Saturday morning of the agreed swap date. He showed up and I'd also enlisted the help of an aunt and a friend and my DD was going to my mum's for the day. I didn't want her to have to see the stuff she is attached to being taken by removal men or having to be in the chaos of us getting everything ready in the new house. I don't like her going to my mum's if I can help it because my mum smokes indoors and has bipolar but I sucked it up and promised myself after the move, she wouldn't go there again, that I'd be more settled and wouldn't need any nights off.
We got to the new house ready to swap over and, after telling me that they'd been packed for weeks and weeks and putting pressure on me to hurry up with the move, the couple weren't finished. There was still food in the cupboards and fridge and random objects scattered around which hadn't been packed away, like a big cluster of saucepans. It was chaos. All my stuff was put in the shed. I went in to try and help them pack the food up. The lady was disabled and was sitting on the sofa, the husband was 70 and had been moving and packing their collosal amount of stuff for weeks, including about five trips with boxes of stuff to my house the week before. He had been having funny turns and was too weak to do any more on the morning of the move. The removal man (who had been hired by the couple to do their move as well as mine) grumbled loudly about the state of it all and the lady got defensive and said 'EXCUSE ME, I am Disabled!' the removal man said I'm not moving you with that attitude and refused to do their job. He phoned for another company for her, got the last of my stuff in, and left. He text me throughout the day to see how we were getting on and today he said 'sorry, but the woman was vile'. He said one of the companies he tried for her, said 'not a chance, she is vile', and she would be known as she has swapped houses year after year.
In the end the couple didn't leave until 11pm and so I had to go and stay at my mum's house (who I don't get on with, as she has her equally vile tendencies), and lie in bed trying to sleep to the smell of stale cigarettes and unwashed sheets.
I was so stressed that when I saw my mum smoking next to my daughter I lost the plot and had a go at her. She said she could do what she wanted in her own home and called me names and Ä° shouted back and told her to leave us alone and left with my daughter. I know, I was behaving as vilely as everyone else, but I've never been so stressed in my life. All the people who were there to help me move had had to go back to different places to get on with work or studying and couldn't help me today. Because we didn't get the couples stuff out during the day, my belongings never got further than the shed and furniture scattered around randomly wherever it could fit.
They haven't given me the 1k promised yet as they had to use half of it to pay for the last minute new removal company which was a lot more expensive. I had to pay for a taxi to get here from my mum's which was £40 and I used the last of my savings to pay the van man and get food from a pub as I had nowhere to go whilst we tried to find a van company for the couple.
I'm now in a filthy house (they didn't clean either, after I spent a week deep cleaning my old house and hoovering every inch as the last boxes came out) on my own, with a toddler, with all my stuff in boxes in a shed and no structure whatsoever in the whole house and have no one to help me get sorted.
It just feels like my entire stability and life, which I had worked so hard to get, after years of abuse and homelessness, has been pulled away from me. I don't even know where to start. I've had a couple of offers of potential help, later in the week, but I just thought we would have been all moved in, clean, organised and peaceful by the end of yesterday. We arrived at the property by 11am yesterday and still, nothing is done. Im just drained, on top of it all.
I know there's no other suggestion, other than keep on going slowly and doing whatever I can, but it just feels so unfair, that I'm in the crap, whilst the couple who created all this chaos, are sitting happily and sorted out in my nice flat , that I'm missing the stability and familiarity of terribly of right now. Despite the loneliness I felt there, I was in love with the place, after all the work I had put into it. I will say something to the council about it tomorrow, but I doubt there's much they can do.
I just feel so bad about my daughter, who wasn't meant to have to entertain herself whilst I try and run around like crazy, cleaning up filth and moving furniture. Still have to plumb the washing machine in and all sorts. Ä° can't even sleep because i just feel like im breathing in all their fifth.