An update is all

I have a couple of things to write about here, but I feel as if I am clueless on how to get about it. I haven't been able to write any sort of posts in facebook either. It's just.. There are two big subjects. One is the countryside visit, which I will start with here.

Well, start at the beginning Marianne.

Me and my mother left town for the countryside on Tuesday the 28th. I was in a terrible state already before leaving home. I knew that I'd find it hard, but I never could had guessed just how hard it was. We arrived there and the place was in a terrible state. First when we got there, the whole garden was a field. Grass coming up the thighs and although my mom drove the car through most of it and parked just by the door, I couldn't get myself to get out of the car. I was in hysterics... When I can't see things, I just find myself blind to what is beneath the grass. So I sat there, clinging on to my handbag and begging my mother to turn around and drive home. I was terrified. I also knew that the house could very well be rat-and-mouse-ridden. My mother went in to the house, leaving me behind, she was gone for maybe an hour. She came back and even though I had told her before, to not tell me about anything, she did so when I begged her to. She told me that someone had left a bag of food or trash or I don't know what, in the kitchen and there had been a lot of animals in there. And they'd been in most rooms it seemed. She had cleaned it up and she told me that they probably weren't there anymore. (as if they'd go away once they're there...!)

I knew one room of the house where no mice ever goes, so I ran up there, with all my luggage, and I stayed in there for 24 hours. Door shut. I did sneak out to the toilet a couple of times during that time. The toilet is about three meters from the room I was in. It was hellish.

My mom cut some of the grass back, which I felt so stupid about, because she is 80 years old and I am letting her do that work while I am just a big baby stuck in the room. During the whole stay I used up half a box of calming down pills. A quarter of sleeping pills.

The next day my sister Lisa and her daughter Joanna came too. I came down and went outside, where Lisa was already cutting more grass. As we were sitting by the table outside, and talking about the rats and mice, a rat came running out from the high grass on to the cut grass, and then turned back again. It ran perhaps a meter from the high grass, before returning. We all saw it. I stayed put. It was such a hard thing to do, but I stayed. By the table. I tried to breath calmly and just be in the moment. It was fucking awful.

My sister then cut the whole place's grass. There were talk about snakes and lizards but all I could think about was rats mice rats mice rats mice.

I then decided to take control of myself and the house. First thing first, I had Joanna help me go through the bathroom in the basement where the shower is. So I had a shower. That was all for that day. Liam then came by for a quick visit, and I managed to be in the dining room. A whole evening, playing cards. I now had the hallway, the front of the garden, the room I was sleeping in, the stairs up to the room, the toilet upstairs and the dining room. To get to the shower-bathroom and the dining room, I have to go through the kitchen, which is the worst place of the house. I ran through there over and over again.

Then we went home. Me and Liam and Lisa and Joanna, and left my mother there alone, something she claimed that she had looked forward to. (although in several telephone messages afterwards she regretting staying but she is one stubborn woman..)

The relief to be at home again was next to no emotion I've ever felt before. Pure heaven. I will go back there, and it will get easier for each time, but I feel at lost to where I will sleep, as my usual bedroom is in another house, which I can't get myself to go to. I can only see myself sleeping in on of the rooms in the big house and that room really belongs to one of my other sisters. So if she comes there, or someone else who have priority of the room, I am at loss.

I can not take the train back and forth, because the train station terrifies me. There are so many places, and so much stuff, that I am so scared of that I can't describe it. It's just there.

On thursday this week (today is monday) I will have home-therapy. Meaning, my therapist will come to visit me at home, and we will go and try being in places around me that I haven't been to for a very long time.

The photo is from some years ago, it was worse this year, but it gives an idea. The small house on the left side is the house I usually stay in, but as it had rats last year, when I had Ginza, my then cat with me, and it all started an escalating phobia for me, I can't see myself going in there to stay. Also it has no toilet, so I usually go behind the house, and it's no chance that I'll do that for now. I need to take one thing at a time.