Part II of “frequently asked questions that no one asks, but should”

Situation:
Broken car that needs its MOT before we can hit the road again.

Can’t you pay it yourselves?
We live from two social incomes (two and a half if you include my mum, so with three adults) and almost all of our money is being used to staying alive.

So how about getting a job?
You don’t just get a social income. Let’s make that clear to begin with.
My man got mentally discharged from his job about 10 years ago after finally finding out he has autism.
I’ve never worked myself as I had me tested when I was around 20 years old. They labelled me with autism as well. Yes, a lot of people with autism can work, but some simply don’t. We’re both high functioning, but can’t concentrate AT ALL and forcing us to do so would burn us out and doing any activity within a specific amount of time, would give us a lot of anxiety.
Added to this, I suffer from vestibular hormonal migraine. Migraine is a disabling neurological disease. The symptoms are different for every patient and in my case it means I’m always sensitive to light, smells and noises. Lately I’m experiencing dizziness every day and I had a proper vertigo last autumn. When it’s all getting too much for my brain to handle, I get a migraine attack. This means I start seeing aura’s and I somehow can’t see well for about 30 minutes. Followed by a severe headache on one side of my head. If all odds are not in my favour, I can get very nauseous and sometimes even have to throw up. As it is hormonal, I usually experience migraine attacks a few days before, during or after my period. And guess what: my periods al occur every three weeks instead of once a month.
Lastly, we both developed severe germaphobia over the last few years. For us this means we don’t want to be nearby others and don’t want to touch anything that others have touched.

So why would you need a car..? Why not sell your car?
We used to go to the very little fake nature that’s left in our country almost every day by car. We don’t like living at my mentally unstable mum’s house (we try to avoid her at whichever cost because her negative energy is DRAINING ours – it means we only live in my childhood bedroom and in a tent in her paved garden. Mum has been through SO MUCH as well in her life), in a city and we need a peaceful, quiet surrounding. We were able to get up at around 7AM and get back at mum’s house at around 2PM back in the days. If we don’t have a car, it means we literally don’t leave the house. Like, at all. Ever. Which has been the situation for the last 19 months. Why? Because a city has way too much simulants for the both of us during the day and it would mean bumping into a smelly human every few meters or so. So yes, we are walking in the neighbourhood to walk Fannar now and then, but it means we have to walk at nighttime, which means getting up at 4AM. It also means extra light simulants from all traffic lights and lanterns. They’ve triggered a few migraine attacks already and getting up so early hasn’t been much of an advantage either, but hey, it’s better than an anxiety attack.

No bike? Use public transport to travel to nature?
We cycled last summer when sunrise was at 5AM. That was nice and doable. However, it’s not a solution for the other 8 months or so and it still means getting up at 4AM which is way too early especially during summer when people in our neighborhood tend to be even more present and noisy until late in the evening. Also, cycling to nature to spend time there, would mean getting up even earlier, because it’s at least 15km away from here and it would mean cycling back at mum’s house when it’s less busy late in the evening.
The words public transport don’t even exist in our own dictionary. You may understand that traveling that way is a thousand times worse than anything imaginable.

Wait, you’re living at your mum’s? Can’t you get a house closer to nature?
About five years ago, my boyfriend had to leave his apartment that was sort of located in nature, on the German border. It was about 100km away from mum’s house and she sort of demanded me to be at hers as well, so that lifestyle (driving up and down weekly), became too expensive. So expensive that we inevitably stopped paying the monthly rental costs.
We already fled a few months prior to the date they were gonna empty his apartment, since we were bullied by his neighbors. They blamed us for making noise when we were only present for 3 days every week, where we would mostly go for long walks, didn’t wear shoes indoors, never listened to music and didn’t own a TV. No visitors. We had also stopped paying for electricity, since they would charge us WAY too much, like, twice the amount of what it would cost had we lived there FULL-TIME.
We then proceeded to buy an old camper with money we technically didn’t have. We figured it was the cheapest and best option for us to live together but still be able to live close to mother. You know, we could spend most of the time outside the city and then return whenever we had to. However, the old van had to be fixed every day or so by my man, plus neighbours pretended to be bothered by it WHEREVER WE WOULD PARK IT throughout the entire district where OTHER CAMPERS HAVE BEEN PARKED FOR YEARS, so it wasn’t a long-term solution and besides, the neighbours won and the government took our camper over two years ago. Our very own little home where we made the best memories together, got destroyed….

So, I’m 35 years old and I’ve never not lived at my parental house. Until a few years ago, mother would get a severe anxiety attack every time I told her I found a house for my man and me to live in together.
After she accepted the situation later on, it seemed to be too late, as the housing market is, well, it’s hardly even there anymore. I’ve been registered for a long time in my city but you may understand by now that it’s pretty much the same as not moving at all: we can’t and don’t want to live in or nearby a city. The ironic thing with my 17 year of registration, is that I am mostly being offered appartements only..! We could never live in a flat…
We have registered ourselves at many housing associations throughout the last years, but it’s simply too short to even have a small chance on finding a house. I think the average amount of years a person has to be registered before having a chance, is approx 8 bloody years! But we keep on applying to ALL houses there that are being drawn in a raffle. So far no luck.

And “so far” is getting way too long. We’re in survival mode constantly. Grieving our old lives and doing the same things every day at the same times in order to make it to another day. Looking after our bodies as well as we can, so that we feel mentally as well as we can feel in this situation, because I’m sure as hell I wouldn’t be here anymore had I neglected myself.