Today contracts will be exchanged and the house will no longer be mine. I will eat Meze in a new Turkish restaurant with friends and spend many hours before hand in search of something to wear. I am fat with discontent. Grey under the Summer tan. And I have developed a hole behind my right ear. A hole!
I have never understood stress before now. I simply didn’t know how physical it is. How your heart booms and your head aches. How shaky you get inside. I have known pain and trauma but stress is different. Stress renders you devoid of emotion but riddled with anxiety. And though you know anxiety isn’t real, though you are more than capable of rationalising every fear your demented mind presents you with, still it has you trembling. Wide awake in the wee small hours. Snappy and strained.
While there are huge things to worry about, it is the little things that have me coming undone.
A wasp in the car that had me screeching at Ste “What part of “I’m scared!” do you not understand??” as he edged his way through a crazy road he could not possibly stop on and looked back at me in bewilderment while the kids stared in amused horror at the woman once thought of as sane.
A meltdown because he will not go to the corner shop and buy me a Pot Noodle though I have become utterly convinced that a chicken and mushroom pot full of pretend food is the only way I will possibly manage to get anything down a throat closed in fright.
Tears in the bathroom just because no one is looking and I can.
In the midst of stress there is a red hot rage. Rage is new to me too. I can’t usually manage it. But during the five months between the offer to buy my house and the completion of the sale that won’t happen for another two weeks because my buyer has not got around to getting his funds in place, I have witnessed so much incompetence and been told so many lies that I frequently find myself ranting at estate agents and solicitors to no avail at all beyond making me feel momentarily better and getting rage off a chest that seems to be expanding by the day and will soon be walking in to rooms before the rest of me.
So ummm… yes. Stress makes your bosom expand. And makes you want to round up every estate agent and solicitor in the land and have them lick your boots with their lying tongues. Stress makes you irrational and mean and gives you a preposterous yearning for Pot Noodles. These m’dears are your take-aways for the day.
Very, very soon I hope to be back to dispensing sensible advice and encouraging you to live lives less ordinary. Lives less ordinary but hopefully not as downright bloody ludicrous as mine…
Do as I say not as I do and we will all be better off. I have got a HOLE behind my ear don’t you know?
Other Things To Do At BrocanteHome
Browse the Bookstore
Discover a curated list of books to enhance and support life the BrocanteHome way
Life Love & Vintage Housekeeping the by BrocantePrintables on Etsy
Create your own Brocante Life Book, plan Christmas, set up routines and rituals or live life the BrocanteHome way with my guided workbooks and planners.
Take a Course
Discover mindful, meaningful days with self-led, habit-coaching courses from BrocanteHome.
The Slow Scrub Challenge at BrocanteMe 
Goal Setting for Homemakers 
The Brocante Round-Up! 
The Brocante Round-Up!
Do as I say not as I do?? Love it!! And stress is horrible, with the power to twist us and break us. I don’t do stress well, which is why I’m so happy to be out from a stressful school (I hate the woman who picked on me) and with my beloved who asks me to do bizarre things and still says thank you. Do a Julian of Norwich…. “This too will pass….”
I do know. Real estate agents coupled with bankers and people who haven’t got their shit together to buy a house (at least here in the US) is beyond mind-boggling. Go ahead and make them lick your boots.
Brenda