Fear and Loathing in Finchley

So, the keen-eyed amongst you will have noticed that I haven’t written a blog entry in a while. There are two reasons for this and only one of them actually relates to weight-loss – namely that there hasn’t been any. To be honest I haven’t risked getting back on the scales to find out whether I’ve lost any weight, but I know my body and I know I haven’t. Call it intuition, call it a deduction brought on my utter lack of exercise since my last blog, but I’m not getting back on those scales. And that’s the problem isn’t it? This blog started as a motivational tool to encourage me to track my progress and be able to look back through past entries to discover what worked and what didn’t. The fact that people read it has really surprised me and has given me another level of motivation: “don’t slack off, everyone’s watching and they’ll know if you do”. So one of the reasons I haven’t been back here in a while is because I’ve slacked off and I’m too ashamed to face everyone.

It would be easy to lump all the blame on myself without looking at external factors – I’m a big believer in being hard on myself – but in this case I have to admit that there’s been a toxic level of mentallness in the air, and for once it’s not all mine.

So, over to Scario, what can I say about him? I can say that he’s made the last couple of weeks an absolute nightmare, that I haven’t felt safe in my own home, that I lock my door at night and that Tony and I were forced to stay in a hotel on Monday. Yup, good times have not been had in Finchley. I’m going to try and keep this to a minimum as I don’t want to turn this entry into a whine about a terrible landlord, but this entry cannot pass without a nod to what has happened recently.

In short, Scario has always claimed to be our landlord and the owner of the house. He believes this entitles him to set impossible rules and stamp his regal decree on every aspect of house life. The fact that his wife’s name appears on the tenancy agreement instead of his doesn’t seem to bother him, and while he’s living in the house he will exercise his perceived right to treat us like unwelcome guests rather than paying tenants. My answer to his dictatorial regime is to rush quickly upstairs when I come home and lock myself in my room for the rest of the evening, but this is no way to live. There’s no one to complain to – if tenants dare to try and call his wife, or the letting agent he goes ballistic. Literally. Declaring he will lock the living room so we can no longer using it, using phrases such as “how dare you call her?” and becoming so aggressive that you back down and don’t do it again.

 Scario’s rules also extend to having guests in the house and the first rule he imposed upon me was that Tony could stay once a month, a rule apparently instigated by his wife. We laboriously pushed him up to twice a month, which we’ve stuck to religiously and which he’s usually been alright about – until Sunday night.  When Scario discovered Tony in the house on Sunday and, God forbid, would be there on Monday night as well, he shouted, threatened, ordered him from the house and declared (to another tenant) he would call the police to have him removed if he hadn’t left by the following day. Cue homeless people. We managed to stay on Sunday night – in his good grace and infinite kindness he allowed Tony to remain in the house for one night – but had to find alternative accommodation for Monday. To be honest, the hotel was heaven and I would have tried to live there if I hadn’t left my DVD collection back at the house.

Anyway, instead of having a day off on Monday we visited the letting agent, with me verging on catatonic out of worry and fear at my drastically limited options as a tenant, only to be very pleasantly surprised. He gave us hope where hope had previously feared to grow, hope that I might be released from the agreement on grounds of barmyness. Following this, I received a call from the *actual* landlady, Scario’s long-suffering wife, on Tuesday night which revealed even more surprises. Not only is Scario not the landlord, but he doesn’t actually have any claim of ownership over the house either. He’s a tenant. And he’s even been served the same notice as the rest of us for the end of the tenancy in June. His wife set no rules about visitors and has confirmed that Tony can stay as often as he likes on whichever days he likes. She also hinted that Scario might have a drink problem and confirmed that I could leave the tenancy with no financial penalty if he ever made me feel uncomfortable in any way again. Words including, but not limited to, liar, simpleton, bully, abject liar and f*$%ing liar sprang to mind (but not lips) during this conversation and now I feel nothing but anger. How can a person continuously lie in such a proud and brazen way with no other end than to make the lives of others unbearable? I cannot wait to get out of his totalitarian regime. I’m handing back my koolaid and taking off the robes.

Scario’s Reign of Mentallness has affected my work, my sleep, my motivation and basically every other aspect of my life. Now that it’s starting to calm down I’m beginning to get everything back on track, but I have to say that it led to two emotional breakdowns for me in the last two weeks. This is a really dark period that starts with a voice niggling at the back of my mind telling me that everything I do is wrong, that no one wants to know me and that I’m absolutely alone. I start to doubt each aspect of my life until I end up a tearful, gibbering wreck incapable of holding a conversation or leaving the house on my own. Afterwards, there’s no sense of relief, just utter exhaustion during which I can sleep for over 12 hours, and after that a numbness which sometimes lasts until it comes round again. Thankfully I haven’t been alone in this and the cycle’s been broken, meaning I can get on with my life again, but it has taken its toll: on my nervous system, my sleep pattern and most noticeably (I suppose because the rest of them are internal!) my waistline. It also led to an embarrassing episode at a hen weekend that was nothing more than a sad misunderstanding, but that left me too ashamed to face the world and in a state of panic for days afterwards. When your own worst enemy is none other than yourself there really is no winner.

I could blame Scario for my lack of weight-loss, I could blame my mental state, I could even blame the fact that I have been eating out for the last week in an attempt to avoid the house, but I can’t neglect to blame myself as well. This was supposed to be a time in my life when I worked harder than I’ve ever worked before, and I feel ashamed that I’ve failed in what I saw to be my final push towards a lighter life. If I’m honest I’m not actually sure how to get up and start again, or even if I can.