Finally some goodness.

I have finally gotten the help i have been desperately searching for for over 7 years. I have a new support worker & she is wonderful. All the others i’ve had have been all talk & nothing comes of it. This support worker has been a godsend, gotten things done, supported me & gone out of her way to help me.

She arranged to get some cleaning women in to help me clean out my house. At first i was intimidated by them because they don’t look like your typical cleaning ladies but turns out they are actually such nice people who really helped & supported me through the process, they were so funny, great to talk to & even shared their lives with me. They are keeping in touch with me. Apparently i was their first client that participated in the cleaning process, they said so far all the other clients in situations like mine just leave & let them do it. Last time i had so called help, it turned out to be traumatising because they were just a clean out crew (as in when someone moves out & leaves stuff behind & they throw it all away) & nothing more, they didn’t take my mental health into consideration or take care with my things & threw out things that cannot be replaced like my only photo of my great grandfather, my grandfathers hand written poem for me & family tree & other precious things along with family heirlooms. I was left so depressed & heart broken after that experience. This time though was a positive experience. These women took care with everything. They have now finished upstairs in my house except the wall that has mould as they aren’t experienced to treat it. They have also asked my support worker if they can continue if there are enough funds to clean bottom floor. Not as much needs doing just mainly windows, floors & walls, not much to be thrown out from downstairs unlike upstairs, we filled 3 skip bins full of stuff i parted with. I’m quite happy with myself of how much stuff i got rid of.

I also got set up downstairs in my loungeroom to temporarily sleep while upstairs was being done & in a nice new bed with a smooth mattress instead of the old lumpy 1 with springs sticking through cutting me. Well i decided to stay down here instead as i only need to go upstairs for the bathroom. The laundry & kitchen are down here & i have much more space, more light coming in the window, i can play with the cats with much more room & i’m now cooking every day & moving around much more than i used to. I have lost more than 5kg in less than a month. So this moving downstairs is a positive thing for me. I’m feeling so much better mentally & i have less anxiety.

Department of housing has been happy with my progress but they haven’t seen the drastic changes from the clean-up yet. I’m sure they will be impressed with that. I also have a new dept housing officer who is lovely & genuinely wants to help. That also is a big help with my anxiety. I don’t have all that days of anxiety i used to have before an inspection.

Downside of the clean up is my cat Sealy who is a small sized cat because of his heart issues pushed through a hole in the wall (created from years of leaning back in the same spot when sitting on my bed) & hides in the first floor roof. He had me worried sick because i couldn’t find him, the cleaning girls couldn’t find him either. I was so worried i physically felt sick the other day. I hadn’t seen him for over 7 hours & when he finally emerged he just looked at me like i was a drama queen, the little shit. I have now temporarily blocked the hole & i’m sure he’ll work his way back in soon enough. I plan on getting it fixed but first i have to get a door put on my bedroom so i can lock him out of the room because as soon as someone comes to the door he runs & hides so if a maintenance person comes to fix the hole he’ll just run back into the roof, so i need that door first to make sure he’s not in there.

My female cat Charlie made friends with the girls & the girls said she was their supervisor & watched everything until the vacuum cleaner was turned on & then she bolted.

It took about 4 full days spread out over 2 weeks to complete the clean out up stairs & my body is in so much pain from doing it & also from moving around much more than i’m used to. I had to go 3 days without my pain medicine & that was really hard but i got through it.

I’m also not snacking on snacks like i used to. I think cooking & eating propper meals is a big part of that. I’ve hardly touched the snacks in almost 2 weeks.

I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel with this whole dept housing thing. I’m more motivated with positive changes & putting them in practice now that I’ve seen the huge drastic difference & how i feel better mentally for those changes that i couldn’t even picture in my head before.

It’s saddening amazing how we can unintentionally get ourselves into uncomfortable & bad situations & tolerate it then adapt to it because its to hard to fix on our own & without the right help.