Frozen

on trying to hold it together

It is a new experience for me. I am walking down Eglinton Street on the south side of Glasgow. I drive up and down here a couple of times a day on the school run. It’s sparse and grey and urban and when we first moved here I kept talking about how green Glasgow is, how Glasgow means the dear green place so the kids didn’t think that the whole city was concrete and pavements.

The street isn’t the new bit though. I know the car wash and the petrol station, Kashmir Store and June Brides. My car has bumped through every pothole and each time we pass the O2 Academy my youngest daughter borrows my phone, so she can google the name of the band on the reader-board.

What feels new is the numbness invading my body. I’ve dropped the girls at school and the car felt sluggish and tired. Halfway down Eglinton Road a red light comes on telling me that the oil needs topping up and STOP THE VEHICLE NOW. My brain flicks into the flight and fight mode that has become my unwelcome default over the last month. I turn right into a car park and think about phoning someone. Anyone. Change my mind, reverse the car, spin around and drive back up Eglinton Road to a garage.

The mechanic tells me the car will cost £180 to fix and I nod. Tell him I need the car to pick up my daughter just before 3 and stumble out into the city. That is when the numbness starts to kick in.

I’d spent the previous night not sleeping. Awake at 2.30am with a bird in my chest, like so many nights. On my laptop sending emails to a care support worker and my MP. Blue light shining out at me and a restless man next to me trying to ignore his desperate girlfriend. When the shit hits the fan it’s bad for the people who love you too, and this knowledge makes everything a bit more painful.

At breakfast time, I cook eggs for my daughters on autopilot. Don’t wash my face or put contact lenses in. No attempt to look pretty. This is the beginning of everything shutting down, my brain and body doing only what is absolutely necessary. On the way into school, the car lazy and thirsty for oil, my 15 year-old plays motivational pop songs to get herself in the right frame of mind for a maths exam. She makes me laugh and that surprises me, because life doesn’t feel funny.

I forgot to say that before the eggs and the not washing my face, I had left my 19th message on my Universal Credit journal. For weeks I have tried to be just the right balance of desperate and polite. UC claimants are warned very frequently that abuse will not be tolerated. I used to think it is sad this needs to be pointed out, but this month has made me realise that desperation is steeped in frustration, so no wonder it often emerges as shouting or swearing. I hadn’t received any of my benefit payments since the middle of March and the night before I’d been told that my mortgage application would no longer be accepted. The money I had declared from the sale of my house in England had forced my case to be reassessed and no one would tell me when that might happen.

Universal Credit assumed I could live off the proceeds from my house, but my bank account will quickly drain in the absence of me being able to work more than a few hours a week. City rents are more than double what my mortgage would be. I know that owning a home is a privilege, and I know there are many people in much more precarious positions. But it is frightening not being able to work when you have a child who can’t learn at school and no one is willing to fund an alternative education. The state simultaneously shafts me and saves me. I feel out of control and desperately reliant on my benefits. When they stop, I have no way at the moment of replacing them with a decent income. I wrote last week about the shame that can accompany needing state support. I would like not to need anything from anyone. I would like to be completely independent.

Back to Eglinton Road, I have no mortgage, no income and now no car. And I have spent weeks being ignored, or told me that I am not a priority. My children are not a priority. They are my priority though, and I am sinking. The cool spring air stings my skin, as my body tries to feel something. I’m shutting down though. I text my mum. I haven’t even got the energy to cry. Anyone who knows me knows this is a bad sign. I cry all the time. This week though I’ve become robotic, machine-like, in an attempt to field the hostility surrounding me. And now, walking towards Bridge St metro station, I have stopped feeling anything at all. There is nothing left.

At home I make a coffee and call Universal Credit. The phone operator tells me he cannot escalate my case but he will write a message for my case worker. I know this will not make any difference because I’ve tried this before, but I go through the motions. The operator asks me what I want to say. I tell him about the cancelled mortgage application. The disabled daughters. The lack of educational support. The housing crisis. Anything else? he asks. I don’t know how to come across as desperate enough to trigger a decision on my benefits. I am trying to be calm and polite and I know I don’t sound as desperate as I feel. He posts the message on my online journal and I thank him. He has been kind to me and I am grateful.

Later that day I will walk with my quiet daughter up to the nature reserve by the canal. For the third time someone will say to me have you had a good week? and I will shake my head and she will raise her eyebrows and I don’t know her well enough to explain so I quickly tell her about a good thing that happened, a swim in a loch, and hope she won’t notice that I’m falling apart on the inside. I’m still numb which is helpful - the falling apart is hidden deep down. I watch my daughter pressing a stone into a square of linen, as green and yellow from leaves and petals bleed through the fabric.

An hour later I am back at my flat. I open the Trainline app on my mobile so I can buy a train ticket to Edinburgh, where my two youngest daughters will meet their father. I buy the wrong ticket, back to front, a return from Edinburgh to Glasgow, and hope I can still use it. I drop my metro ticket on the floor and have to race back to the flat to find it, leaving my daughters standing in the street next to their suitcase. My boyfriend is outside with his bike and I don’t even look at his beautiful eyes, don’t want him to see this version of me. Throw a comment over my shoulder and run back to the kids. Behind me, he is looking at my retreating figure and feeling helpless. Later we will argue a bit and it’s lucky I didn’t know that would happen, because the knowledge probably would have broken me.

But I manage to stay numb on the metro. Numb at the ticket office when the woman tells me my ticket will be fine. Numb as I sit at a table seat with my two daughters and bring out biscuits and nuts from my bag. I am glad the girls can leave their frozen mother behind for a weekend. Sit back in my seat with an audiobook in my ears and watch their sweet faces. Even in this state I know that I love them and that this love is the thing that keeps me going.

My phone pings and it is Universal Credit telling me to check my online journal. I open my laptop and log into my account for the hundredth time that day. A PDF is attached with the outcome of my case review. I am so numb that I’m beyond the sick feeling in my stomach. Beyond shaking hands. Beyond everything. Scan the letter. I have six months to find a home. They will keep paying me an income. Text my boyfriend. Add a crying emoji, even though there are no tears because the girls are looking at me and I flash them a pretend smile. He messages me straight back and he is a mess. I know the thaw is on its way because I feel bad in my heart that I have caused him so much worry.

Text all of the friends and family who have held me so tightly, wrapped me in fierce love. Get off the train at Waverley and hand the kids over to a man who still can’t look into my eyes. Get back on the same train that takes me to the city that feels like home. To the man who feels like home.

There has been a huge cost to this experience. It is impossible to take away a family’s security for any period of time and for the pain and fear not to ripple out. It’s why I believe that every tiny action means something. Every smile at a stranger. Every carefully chosen word. Every leaf that hangs on a breath then falls to the ground.

I am not the same girl that I was seven weeks ago. I am more scared. More cynical. I already knew that it doesn’t matter how good you are, how kind you are, how hard you work. Sometimes none of this will be enough. But now I’ve also learned that it’s possible for one bad thing to happen, and for that bad thing to knock into another, until bad things are spiralling and life is a cyclone, spinning out of control and destroying everything in its path.

The numbness is subsiding now, although I think I’ll stay frozen for a while yet. I’m less trusting, and I think perhaps a permanent armour has curled around my sensitive soul. This the cost of trying to thrive inside cruel systems. Over the next few days I will melt. Tears will pour from my eyes once more and I’ll soften. I refuse to become hardened and brittle in the face of hostility and indifference. Instead, let me be a river, caressing the rocks that stand in my way and flowing fast and hard towards the sea.