When in doubt, laugh hysterically

Saturday saw the final moving out of the flat. I’ve been looking forward to this day for a long long time. Not least because it would mean that I would finally have something nice to sleep in and somewhere to hang my clothes but because it would mean the end to things and the opportunity to begin moving on.

Whilst I’ve still had my stuff in the flat, there’s still been a connection to it and, by default, to my ex. I don’t think this is particularly helpful for either party in terms of getting on with your life and leaving things in the past.

I could have moved sooner but that would have meant paying for people to come and do it and I wanted to avoid that if possible because money is so tight at the moment anyway. My salvation came in the form of a friend’s boyfriend who could borrow a van to transport the rest of my belongings.

The main concern was the wardrobe. It was not an expensive piece of furniture by any means. It was a cheapazoid number from Argos which is meant to be thrown up together and then to stay in the same place. It’s not supposed to be moved about. It had barely survived the move from my Mum’s house to the flat when I first moved in with my ex so I feared for its survival when faced with another move across town.

After measuring the wardrobe it was decided a bigger van would be needed and on Saturday my friends showed up in this little beast.

Now I am no auto-fiend. I don’t own a car and I have no particular interest in them generally. If I see a car I like and you ask me to describe it you I’m most likely to say something along the lines of “Oooh it was green and sort of wavy”. This aside however I had to marvel at this van. I even went so far as to utter the word “sexy” when describing it. Sleek is another word I would use actually. It was a behemoth. I considered calling the whole thing off and just moving in to the van and sleeping there from now on.

Extra muscle arrived in the form of another friend’s boyfriend (sometimes it depresses me that I’m the only single girl in my group of friends, other times I’m pretty glad they’re all shacked up with someone) and the task began.

The bed was no problem, my Dad and I had taken it apart earlier in the day and that was all sorted. The boys went in to inspect the wardrobe and after standing round manfully for a while they took it in hand. Luckily for them, because it’s cheap and nasty, it’s also pretty light so I didn’t need to worry so much about them crippling their backs and needing to wear backbraces for the rest of their days.

They got it out of the bedroom. They got it out of the flat. They got it round the rather tricky corner on the stairs (damn you listed building with no lift!). They got it all the way down the stairs. And came to the archway at the bottom of the stairs.

And nothing.

Stuck.

No way forward.

They tried tilting. They tried going at it from an angle. The three females tried to say encouraging and helpful things. But it wasn’t looking good.

My palms started to feel a little sweaty. I was still halfway up the stairs behind the wardrobe so couldn’t see round the corner to try and see a way of manoeuvring it. I knew there had to be a way, it had come up there after all, but I had no idea what to suggest.

But boys know what to do don’t they and they figured a way of doing it. They tilted a little more and swung it a little bit this way and pulled it a little bit that way and it was finally through the archway. Success. My heart soared.

Then there was a loud crack.

And a bang.

And I watched as my wardrobe veeery slowly fell in on itself.

You know those videos where they blow up cooling towers and they slow it down so you can see each part slowly combusting and coming apart? Very similar to what happened on the stairs. Every. Single. Part of it came unstuck.

My heart actually stopped. I had quick flashes of all my clothes hanging out in piles on the bedroom floor. I had visions of me being locked in a mental home because I couldn’t handle the stress anymore. All I could think to myself was “Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod”. There weren’t any coherent thoughts.

There was silence.

And I realised that I had a few choices;
1. Start crying and probably never stop
2. Fly into a rage and kill everyone with the remnants of the wardrobe
3. Laugh

And so I laughed. And everyone else breathed a huge sigh of relief that I hadn’t chosen the first two options and started laughing too. I laughed even harder when one friend’s boyfriend said,

“If I’d have known it was going to do that I’d have brought the smaller van.”

Once home I made an emergency call to my Dad in rather panicked tones begging him to come round with drills and screwdrivers and nails. I had pinned all my hopes and dreams on having a wardrobe by the end of the day and by hook or by crook I was going to get one. Luckily for me he was available and we managed to cobble it (mostly) back together. The drawers still aren’t quite right, in the Grand Wardrobe Collapse of 2010 a piece of wood got broken in half. My feeling was that it was so small it was irrelevant. Turns out I know jack shit about furniture. Dad is going to get some more wood and come round at a later date and fix it for me. At the moment I couldn’t care less, I don’t mind that my drawers are just lying in the bottom of the wardrobe. They are in their place. Neatly.

And I can slowly feel my sanity beginning to return.