Downward spiral

Sean was now three and things were pretty miserable for me in my homw in Newry. A lot of unsavoury things were happening and I just couldn't take the pressure. I decided to move back home to Dundalk and surround myself with my family. I felt very unsafe and with good reason (reasons I can't publish here) so I left my home, my furniture, some of my personal belongings and moved back to Dundalk. I organised the house to be rented out and didn't tell anybody in Newry where I was going. I moved into a rented house back in Blackrock in April and looked forward to a long peaceful summer with my son and my own family. Within two days the house was broken into, all the windows nailed shut and the lock was replaced. That was me and my baby locked out... Just to fill you in: when I left Dublin Dave and I sold our home and after paying off the remainder of the mortgage, Dave gave me what was left. It was very generous of him. I had used a lot of that money to buy the house in Newry. But you may remember, back in the day it was common for only the man's name to be on the deeds of the house. Before his death Sean had told his mother and one of his sisters that after we were married he was going to sign the house over to me seeing as we had used my money to buy it. Then, the plan was, we would buy another house in Newry town and if our marraige didn't work out (sadly Sean was developing a serious drinking problem and was at this time recieving help for alcoholism) we would both have a property to live in. Neither of us would find ourselves homeless. If things did work out as we hoped they would, in five years we would sell both houses and build a nice one in the country on a plot of land his uncle had promised to gift him. Who was it that said, 'men make plans and God laughs?" When I moved back home I had hoped to put a lot of my problems behind me, and for a short time it looked as if I did. But then, within a very short period of time, I fell out with three of my sisters, the very ones who had been a great support to me in the past. I couldn’t believe it. As sisters go, we were fairly close, so I knew something was very wrong. This was the last straw for me. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t understand why these things were happening. I felt every crutch I had to support myself and my life had been kicked from under me. First Dave and my home in Dublin, then Sean, then Sean’s family, then my home in Newry, and now my own family.

Everything went into a spin. I found myself unable to trust my own judgement or instinct. Everything I touched seemed to crumble away. After one particularly bad falling out over the phone with a sister, I sat on my bed and cried and cried. I thought of all the people that I had been close to over the years and how almost every one, for different reasons, had let me down. I thought of the long life that I had in front of me, and the thoughts of going through it friendless and on my own horrified me. To have to go against my very nature and not trust people, to have to close ranks and shut people out, to harden myself as I had seen other people do seemed impossible. Yet the opposite of it was just as bad, to go through life continually leaving myself open to people, trusting them and being hurt and deceived again and again would be unbearable.