Stop Waiting For It To Get Easy (It Won't)

It’s a rare warm July evening, where it’s almost comfortable enough for me not to have to pretend that I’m not cold – a fleeting experience as precious as gold in England. Hand in hand Jake and I walk with our bare feet sinking into the sand as the sun goes down over the water. It has been a wonderful afternoon spent on the beach with Jake’s sister. I had felt uncharacteristically close to my sister-in-law and managed to feel like an adult, not a petulant teenager. I am full of that heavy restfulness that comes after a particularly satisfying meal, with perhaps a slight haze from alcohol and sunshine.

The stars come out in the clear sky and there’s just enough magic in the air that I don’t immediately dismiss Jake’s talk of buying a house as being on the same level as his ‘what would I do with lottery winnings’ musings. Could we really make it work? Have all my years of scrimping and nagging Jake to do the same really paid off? Did all the things I’d sullenly denied myself finally have a purpose? We hash and rehash the numbers and plans, and for the first time I begin to believe it might just be possible. I float home on a fragile bubble of hope, my head overflowing with thoughts and excitement.

In the end it was true – we could afford to buy a house. But nobody told me that the hard part was still to come. I hadn’t even considered that a bank willing to loan to people on visas is rare (Halifax does in case you’re wondering). I didn’t know just how long it takes to go through the hoops of a house purchase and how easily they can fall through. We lost two homes, one when we thought we would be moving in that week. I never imagined that by the end I would be at the point of begging someone – anyone – to just take my life savings so it can be over. I theoretically understood, but wasn’t fully prepared for the weight of by far the biggest financial decision of my life.

Nine months later I’m crouched in our construction site living room. My head is full of cold, paint fumes and plaster dust. It’s approaching midnight and I’m just about ready to scream. A full month has passed since moving into our new home. How blessed we are in the current UK housing market to own such a lovely three-bedroom house with a large garden and conservatory, when all we had imagined on that beach last year was a small starter home. But it’s easy to forget that when yet another thing has gone wrong.

You see, the hideous living room wallpaper just had to go, so no sooner had we done our utterly exhausting deep clean and moved in, we were redecorating. But absolutely nothing seemed to go right. Our steaming revealed (or possibly caused – but don’t tell anyone) cracks in the plaster. I then way overfilled these which led to carpeting the floor with dust from arm-aching sanding. And then the paint stubbornly refused to give up its patchiness. Despite not having got around to much exercise recently, I ache all over from re-varnishing a seemingly endless floor. It has been unexpected problem after problem, but finally it seemed we were on the last step. We’re only trying to hang our second curtain rail. But our wee DIY drill just won’t make it deep enough, no matter how unsafely we push our weight into it. Dejected I give up – there can be no last minute dash to B&Q at this time (which has become more regular than supermarket visits).

The point is – and yes there is a point to my rambling story – that there is never an ‘easy’ time of life. There is so much focus on the challenge of saving for a home deposit – and rightly so, it is a huge hurdle for many. But if you think that once you reach that elusive goal things will be easy, you’re going to be disappointed. Buying a house is a major milestone of adulthood, but it doesn’t make you feel any more mature. In fact my sense of basic household competency has faced many low points while trying to figure out how the hell to do all the things I would have once called my landlord about.

A colleague of mine said the other day that ‘You don’t know truly tired and busy until you have kids.’ I fully believe there are challenges of parenthood that I cannot yet comprehend. But I also think it’s a universal truth that no matter what stage of life you are in, or how tough times have been in the past, you always feel you are currently at full capacity and can hardly see how you would fit more in. On a rare study break I would wonder how I had managed to fit a unit of university into my life around full-time work. Then when I did one unit – I wondered how I had ever fit two units in and so on. And how horrible the distance separating Jake and I was when I lived in Australia, didn’t negate the difficulty of setting up home abroad so far away from family and friends.

Telling ourselves that life will get easier is a coping mechanism to keep ourselves ploughing on, but I’m not sure it ever really does. I don’t mean this to be a depressing train of thought. In fact I think it should be liberating. In realising that every stage of life has its own challenges and that there is no particular moment that we suddenly become competent, in-control ‘proper’ adults, gives us license to live in the moment more. I’m not saying not to save hard – but perhaps a little less hard than I have. I’m not saying not to dream about the future – but perhaps be less obsessed about it than I. Deep down I’m pretty sure we’re all just acting at ‘adulting.’ I find it refreshing when frankness breaks through the façade and old friends tell me about their own struggles. Such a deeply honest exchange is a ray of sunshine on the darkest of days. It lets me breathe a sigh of relief and remember: Oh, thank God, it’s not just me.