House-Hunters International, Billfold Edition: Six Stages of Grief, & An Intermission

by Jessica Furseth

This is Part Four in a series. You can read the previous installments here.

We’ve moved out of our old flat and we’re officially homeless, and I’m feeling something I’ve identified as “relief.” This has less to do with the fact that we’re currently staying with my in-laws, and more to do with the fact that wheels are in motion on the new flat. Can you believe it! I may be living out of a suitcase, in my husband’s boyhood room in the Westest of London, but things are happening!

The bar for thrill in the world of house-hunting is low, and at this point the only thing I really care about is that things are looking good for getting into the Haggerston flat before the spring thaw. Fingers crossed hard.

This very moment, the paperwork is being processed in regards to the tiny, lovely flat by the canal. So many papers! I can fire off documents at a moment’s notice from a great big folder on my desktop: proofs of identification, three years’ addresses, earnings, savings, taxes, marriage, credit …. You name it and I’ve got it here, in triplicates in a big whopping file.

I’m handling it with a teeny bit of grace now, you see, having made it through the first few stages of househunting: denial, anger, depression, resignation. When resignation set in just before the new year I thought it was the final stage, goading the universe: “Bring it, fuckers.” Superstitious or not, this is something you should never never say, as I was soon spending half a day on the phone chasing up a credit report, only for the finance guy who had requested it to tell me he didn’t need it after all.

That was when I hit the stage of house-hunting everyone must reach eventually: fury. I don’t have time for this! I’m trying to work for a living here! I consider myself a pretty reasonable person most of the time, but there have been moments in all this where I no longer recognised myself. People said this would be stressful, but this particular mix of stress and boredom is poison. I was fuming while sitting in the finance office, and feeling quite feral too, having been kept there way past lunch as this guy copied every number from our papers into his spreadsheet. I was struggling to think what I wouldn’t do or give to have all this over with, no joke. There was rage in my heart.

But then I had some lunch (more phở) and soon felt better; usually it’s not an emotional crisis, it’s just hunger. Then came what I dearly hope is the final stage of this little saga — acceptance — which is the part where I’m trotting down to the post office to send certified copies in the middle of the workday without complaint, and being polite to the tax professionals manning the phones at Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. Because I’ve finally got the message: when house-hunting, the system makes you its bitch. You can’t hack this. You just have to put everything else on hold and do what they damn well tell you to do. Keep your eyes on the East London prize.

So that’s what we’re doing now, with all our stuff in storage while living with family and occasionally roaming between generous friends. I thought I would find this homeless intermission frustrating but it hasn’t been too bad actually, skipping around with nothing but a backpack. This short-term outlook isn’t all that unfamiliar, as I lived in ten houses during my first ten years in London and like to travel light.

While my husband is thrown by this lack of permanence, I’ve found myself enjoying this intermission a little. It’s my last bit or floating around before I tie myself to owning property, a commitment weighing much more heavily on me than getting married ever did. I’m ready for this next step, but what’s it called when you’re nostalgic for something that hasn’t ended yet?

To be concluded!

Jessica Furseth is a freelance journalist living in London. She loves the Internet but has too many tabs open. Read her stuff on Tumblr or come say hello on Twitter.

This story is part of our Real Estate Month series.

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