Hey everyone, thank you for reading this. I'm going to start with the practical matters and then talk about the emotional in another post.
I'm still at @Melymnia ( on Twitter) 's house. Whatever happens, I don't intend to stay longer than the 20th. She and her boyfriend are both very nice, but they have their own struggles. The longer I stay, the more of an imposition I am on them, and that's not fair to them at all.
I'm not eating that well, but that's because my mood doesn't help hunger. But I am eating at least some amount every day.
On the 8th of March I regained contact with my ex. She feels regretful and guilty about the situation, and looks as heart broken as I am. When I got off the bus we both just held each other and cried for a long time.
This was done by us going around the inept and honestly malicious social worker who insists on no contact, no communication.
I scrubbed a couple of posts from here that were about her and how our relationship formed. While everything I said in them is true, and I stand by it, they weren't conductive to resolving things peacefully. I still have the text, so maybe one day I'll reinstate them. Maybe not.
On the 9th of March I made the long journey to see her at a burger place we both like. We talked for a long while about our relationship, and what went wrong between us, and how we can treat each other better and live better in the future. We reconciled, somewhat.
However, this doesn't mean that I can go back to her.
I was allowed to stay at the front doorstep and given two medium size suitcases, the kind that are just a hair over carry-on sized. I spent an hour and a half kneeling on the doorstep, sorting my things in the rain.
I have at least my VR Headset, some clothes more suitable for the terrible cold snap, my hard drives with personal files, my graphics card, and also the art I got from @wolvesoutside (twitter) and my dear friend @lobst.
I wasn't given everything that I asked for, but I hope to visit again in this last week, and get those.
My goals when recovering my property are to get things that are difficult or impossible to replace, or hold serious sentimental value, or hold high financial value. Sometimes one thing can be all three. The complete round-trip journey from here to there and back again takes around seven hours, and is slightly under €65.
That might sound like an extravagant cost to get "some stuff", but the reality is that when I did it, I recovered things that cost much more than €65. The graphics card usually goes for over €200 used. The VR headset and controllers, someone is trying to get $682 for them on ebay US. I could never afford to get this shit all over again, not where I'm going.
(And that VR headset, you gotta understand, has it's value multiplied by it being @lobst's old one.)
My goal is that when I end up back in England, sleeping on my mother's sofabed in her one-bedroom khrushchyovka style flat, I can get up and running again quickly.
I'm going to get a computer together, so I can get on VR with you all. I'm going to get some noise cancelling headphones, so I don't have to hear her TV programs all day.
I'm going to get a shitty job, hopefully at somewhere like CEX, and I'm going to bring some money in.
I'm going to get myself some microsoft certs. It's all azure/365 cloud shit nowadays but this is the path of least resistance to some professional qualifications that'll get me above totally garbage tier work.
Every penny of the gofundme and every penny sent to me on paypal is being treated like it's the last money I'll ever see. I'm trying to rely more on sandwiches and my bicycle than mcdonalds and the bus, for example.
No plan survives contact with the enemy, but this is my plan so far.
