Neither Here Nor There

“There is no easy way to say this. I’ve lost my job.”

In November 2013, I returned from art school to find my husband on the back step of the home where we’d lived for the past 13 years. He abruptly announced that he was now unemployed. Such a bombshell was never going to be good news but it came at a time when I was already aware of the lurking presence of an annual bout of winter depression; the vague sense of dread that I’d been carrying around with me turned into full-on anxiety as I contemplated our now uncertain future.

The Winter Blues affect many people, and often the worse time of all is the supposedly jolly sounding ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’. It is a peculiarly difficult time of year when all the anticipation surrounding Christmas dissipates into a heavy feeling that combines ennui, lethargy, loneliness, negativity, fear, uncertainty, dissociation and isolation.

One way I attempt to combat such feelings is to get outside and walk. My usual route takes in a stretch of road that I find hard to explain to visitors, often referring to it as ‘the bit before the village’. It apparently belongs in neither this village nor the next town along, being a no-man’s land, a non-place, a liminal space sandwiched between river, railway and fields. It is a connection but not a destination, not a beginning nore an end, neither here nor there.

Even though it is part of my solution for dealing with depression, its untethered, ill-defined nature also embodies how I feel at this time of year, reflecting my own anxieties about our future back at me.

Two years have passed and still no job for my husband. The limbo-like state that we’ve existed in is coming to an abrupt end, difficult decisions have to be made, especially as it is now evident that we’ll have to move away from the home we’ve made here with our children. I still don’t know what the future holds, and the fear and uncertainty are as strong as ever, and yet, knowing that changes must be made has brought a sense of purpose to our lives that has been missing for so long. For the frist time I’m thinking of this as an opportunity for a fresh start rather than merely the loss of what we had before. These last two years have been the ‘bit before’.

Now it’s time to see what comes next.

January 2016