Home, sweet new home

After several false starts, I now finally have a new home to move into. The agreement is done, I have the key and I went there for the first time today and I …. wept.

For the first time in my life I have my own home where no one is doing me a favor by letting me stay.

I had not realized till that moment just how much it meant to me to be able to count on having a roof over my head without having to suffer unkindness in order to have a home. Perhaps this marriage has warped me far more than even I realize.

It isn’t the dream home I had blogged about with the one bedroom, hall and kitchen with stunning view of the stream. It is in the same building, but only a room and kitchen. Studio apartment, I believe it is called, when it is in a building (as opposed to “chawl”).

Still, there is a huge window, albeit with a construction going on outside it. But the road is dirt and has next to no traffic, which can only be a plus. It is what was available. I am hoping to keep an eye and move into one with a bedroom in the same building when the opportunity presents. Two bedrooms if need be.

I stood in that empty home waiting for me to make it mine, and already I was dreaming of plants in that strip of a balcony, a happy Nisarga, how my belongings would fit there…

It wasn’t without challenges. I went over with some of my stuff in two bags and a few parcels on my bicycle. I didn’t have the key or the agreement. I went over to the agent who was to give me the agreement, his shop was closed. Cycling awkwardly I reached my new home, only for the phone of the woman who had the key to not work. So I had to go to her home on the fourth floor in another wing with all my luggage.

The lift wasn’t working without electricity, so I walked up with the whole stuff. Her doorbell wasn’t ringing, so I knocked… and knocked …. and knocked. I had no idea what I’d do if she wasn’t there. Go home after lugging the luggage all over the place and up and down stairs? No….

Just as I was about to give up, she opened the door. She had been sleeping in an inner room, and hadn’t heard me. Down I trudged with the key clutched in my hand. Up three floors in my wing and there…. home, sweet home.

Most of my belongings here are packed and ready to go. Tomorrow I’ll hunt down a suitable tempo carrier. Mom is coming over too. I need to book gas, internet. After living in a vacant limbo, it seems life seems to have become vibrant. So much to do. So much to dream.

Looking forward to a home my child and I can thrive in. Dreaming of saving up and buying land to build a home in eventually. So many dreams all of a sudden. Feels strange.

A new dawn

As I look upon my last few days in this home, the only light at the end of the tunnel seems to be the new home where Nisarga and I will finally go to, leaving behind these nightmares and the debris of a dream.

Exiting a marriage with a disabled child in tow is a daunting thought. Yet what alternatives are there? Living here is unbearable. Each evening a summons to join the drunk husband for conversation about my flaws. Or he will make a scene and wake the sleeping child. And the glorious end to each night being fending off advances of a husband who thinks I am stupid, unworthy, evil, and I abuse our son and take advantage of him, but he still has the large heart to think I am beautiful and he doesn’t understand why I refuse such grand love and deny him a hug… and then a grope… and then drunk, rough sex that couldn’t care less about how revolted I am. The options are simple. To say yes, or to say no all night till I say yes or he switches gears and tells me to get lost. Leaving the room is not an option when he will only follow into the room where Nisarga sleeps. I am tired of being a shrew, of jumping at shadows and looking for escape when the man I loved enough to marry is in sight. Suicide is not an alternative with no one else to take care of the little one.

He claims to love me, but not enough to do something about the drinking – which he insists is not a problem and is only my over reaction.

Forward, I must. One foot ahead of the other. Not thinking beyond those few steps in sight. Plodding along, conquering eventually with endurance what I don’t have the strength to overcome now.

The goal is simple. To be happy. To live simple. To create as many possibilities for my son as I can.

I have found a home on rent. It is beautiful. It ended a nightmare hunt of everything I could afford being a dump. It is a home to be happy in, and that is what we will be. I am determined.

I have the support of friends. I have my son. That is all I need.

That home is enough to show me dreams, even as I sit trapped in the loo, with my loving husband waiting for me to come out, so he can resume our “romance”.

I think of escape and I remember stale dreams I once had. Of a bright home full of love and welcome. Of simple, home cooked food. Of growing some of our own food. And more.

Those carefree dreams must now be tempered with limited finances and changed needs of a child with great difficulties. But they are a start. They are something to aspire to, when all else looks hopeless. So I am grabbing them with both hands, and holding myself accountable for creating meaning with this canvas I have created for myself at great cost.

I will blog about home here, so that I can hold myself to account.

Will I be able to create a home worthy of writing about?

The challenge. I will. There is no alternative.