I’ve had to temporarily leave my apartment, my spacious, roomy, airy 800sqft apartment that is all mine. I moved out because the house is old, and the water damage around the shower drainage was no longer possible to ignore; it needed to be fixed.
According to my landlady’s insurance company, it was an easy four-week job. Unfortunately, it’s my only bathroom, so I had to move out. Not ideal, but not a disaster either. So, I booked a one-week vacation to Stockholm and took my aunt up on her offer to stay with her and her family for the remaining three weeks.
That was eleven weeks ago; I’m still sleeping on my aunt’s couch while slowly losing my mind. There are people made for family life, sharing space, and all those small, everyday compromises that cohabitation entails; I’m not one of them. I’m just not.
My aunt’s family is wonderful, but they’re always there. The most privacy I get in a day is the bike ride home from work. For someone used to living alone, it’s exhausting. I don’t know how people do it; everything is a negotiation, every minor decision a compromise; it’s unbelievingly frustrating.
Every week when I drop by my apartment to water my plants, I look around and think, surely, this is the week they’ll finish. It never is, and there’s nothing I can do.
It’s an insurance claim, and this is the contractor the insurance company cooperates with. The only one, because (and here’s the second problem) every contractor is booked a year in advance.
There’s nothing I can do except try to keep my sanity while they continue to work at a fucking snail’s pace.
Someone, shoot me up with tranquilizers and wake me up when my bathroom is ready. No. Really. Please.
Xenodike 