The emotional impact of a car crashing into your house.

I’m writing this five weeks later. And I wish (I wish) I could sit here and tell you that things feel lighter now. That I’ve been able to process. That life is getting back on track.

Instead, I’m living on a diet of fries and ice cream, sleeping on a sofa, dreading going to sleep because a)I don’t sleep anymore and b) it means I have to get up again in the morning.

Click here to play the soundtrack for this post whilst reading (if you’re dramatic and theatrical like me . This one REALLY fits.)

I feel like a walking, talking ball of fire. I’m snapping at everyone and everything. Yesterday I sobbed on the floor to my dog ‘because I’m not the mama she deserves right now‘. I’m so angry about everything that has happened that I don’t know how it feels not to be angry anymore. Anger is new to me. I don’t ‘do’ anger. And here it is, shoving itself in my face day in and day out.

When I get up in the mornings, often after only a couple of hours sleep, it feels like I might keel over from the heaviness of the invisible iron weight that sits in my solar plexus. (Like this one, but HEAVIER). I sob because the day has only just begun, and yet I have to drag all of this through with me, and I don’t know how to anymore.

I’m experienced with depression, kind of a pro really. But I’ve been depression-sober for four magical years, and having her back here is not the vibe. It’s what I like to call ‘situational depression’. When my world shrinks because I feel trapped in it, and becomes a locked underground cave, she thinks it is funny to move into that tiny world and make it feel smaller.

If I can keep even a single thread of connection to myself whilst she visits, then as soon as the exit appears, the depression leaves. It’s how it’s always worked, and actually as a seasoned depression veteran, what’s kept me going through her visits.

On occasion however, there is no exit for a really long time, too long. And that’s when things get dangerous. The threads of myself all but disappear, and I am simply left with who she tells me I am.

I was already at peak life stress before a car crashed into my house. And then, a car crashed into my house, and my life, and my identity. And took everything away.

My home is gone, and I have no idea when it is going to be rebuilt, if insurance is going to screw me over, or if I will ever know safety in a ‘home’ again. Our temporary accommodation is basically a large room, we only got hot water last week, the lights flicker not in a haunted-by-historic-character kind of way, but in a one-of-you-has-undiagnosed-epilepsy-lets-find-out-who kind of way.

*Authors note: at this point in writing, the depressive episode took a month long journey through my veins. I haven’t physically been able to open my laptop until this moment. And it’s still a bit fragile here. I could be about to take another month’s break. I’m medicated now. And I didn’t think it would get to that. But it did. So I feel like you probably get the gist of how this is all affecting me, and how I hit my own emotional wall. So I’ll post this for now, and hope, and pray, that someday soon things feel easier.

(If you happened to stumble here first, and want the tea because you’re nosy af, the full story of a car crashing into my house is here. If you need practical advice, start with What To If A Car Crashes Into Your House as an appetizer, followed up with a bowl of The Long-Term Recovery Guide After A Car Crashes Into Your House – pending upload).