Cramped, Not Comfortable, Sitting With It Anyway
Sharing a bedroom with your child isn’t something anyone plans for, but it’s where I landed when I moved in with my mom last October, partly to help her out financially and partly because I needed somewhere for me and the kids while I found my feet again after the relationship I had been living in came to an end. I told myself it would be temporary, a year or two while I paid down my debt and saved enough for a deposit, and then I would be in a position to get my own place. It’s a three-bedroom apartment, and there’s actually a lot of space in it, but three bedrooms stops stretching very far once you fit three kids and a grandmother into the equation, so we’ve had to get creative about who goes where.
My daughter and I ended up sharing a room, and neither of us has had our own space since, which took some adjusting to, but we’ve genuinely made it work. Her side of the room is entirely her, art and certificates and posters covering the wall like a running record of everything she’s proud of, and my side has ended up being plants and candles and frames and my books still sitting on their shelf, the same things that made my last room feel like a sanctuary too, just squeezed onto half a dresser instead of a whole one. I wrote before about what I won’t compromise on, no matter where I live, and it turns out that held true even here. Funny how the things that make somewhere feel like mine don’t actually need much space; they just need to be there. There’s still enough room for the projector and my desk, so I can still work from in there. It’s not styled; it’s not the kind of room you would photograph for the blog, but we’ve made it work, and somehow we both still fit into it as ourselves.
My son didn’t get that same outcome. He’s sharing with my mom for now, which isn’t the setup I would have picked for him if I had had the choice. Building him a room of his own was meant to be one of this year’s goals, right alongside paying off the debt and saving toward a deposit. Except none of that is moving right now because I don’t have a job anymore, and honestly, whatever I do end up landing probably isn’t going to pay enough to speed any of it up. So that room for him isn’t a few months away while I sort myself out; it’s just paused, with nothing I can point to that tells either of us when it changes.
There was another part of the plan too, one I hadn’t quite put into words even for myself when I moved in. I wanted to fix up my mom’s place while I was here so that, further down the line, she would actually have options: either sell it and move in with us properly once I had my own place again or keep renting out the room we’re in now once we had moved out. Because moving in with someone to help them financially isn’t really a temporary arrangement, is it? Not when that person is retired, and her situation isn’t going to change on its own. Fixing up her place was meant to be the part where I actually shifted something for her, not just for me. And that’s on hold too, same as everything else, waiting on the same job that hasn’t come yet.
If I’m honest, most days I just long for my own space again. Not even anything specific, just a home where I can decorate the way I actually like, live the way I normally do, and have some peace and quiet that’s mine without having to share it. It’s the same thing I keep landing on whenever I write about what I actually want a home to feel like, except right now I don’t even have the four walls to test that philosophy in, just a shared one. It’s cramped where we are, and it’s not always the most comfortable situation, and there’s a lot I’ve had to swallow that I don’t necessarily talk about.
My daughter and I are so alike that we clash more than either of us would like, being in each other’s space constantly, and she’s a teenager, so of course she needs room away from her mother; that’s normal, but there isn’t really anywhere for her to go be that. I came across a good piece on navigating shared space without letting the tension build recently, and a lot of it rang true for us, even if we’re still working on actually applying it. I end up spending a lot of time in my own room simply because it’s the one place in this whole house that still feels like me, surrounded by the things I actually love. I know I’ll have my own place again eventually. Right now it feels far away, further than I would like, but I’ve learned to sit with that without letting myself spiral into dreading it every day, because that’s not a way to actually live in the meantime.
Still figuring out the money side of starting over?
I didn’t build The Honest Reset from theory; I built it from standing in the Checkers aisle doing maths that had nothing to do with a calculator. It’s a 38-page guide for facing your actual numbers, stripped of guilt and wishful thinking.
Read the full story behind it here: The Guide I Made For The Woman Standing Where I Am