In September of last year I was at Ikea and stumbled upon one of their higher end, three seater sofas in the ‘As Is’ section. It was totally intact and really comfortable, marked down 85% to a whopping $60 Canadian (about 40 quid). The reason for the great deal was that it needed to be covered, and Ikea was totally sold out of the slipcovers for this model.

Robyn had a very small couch in her apartment that wasn’t really doing the job. She had recently been discharged from the hospital (more in a future post), and I figured a nice comfy couch in her apartment may change the atmosphere – kind of like Cognitive Behavior Therapy – looking at a distressful situation differently. I thought, in my desperate attempts to make things better, that this couch may serve as an anchor to redefine her apartment. I was aching to believe that my beautiful daughter had put ‘the things’ behind her that landed her in the hospital in August, and hoped that sprucing up her apartment would be a good start. A spruced up apartment would keep the reprobates and drug dealers away, wouldn’t it?

So I set out to not only make a slipcover, but to totally upholster this couch. I had not really done much of this kind of thing, but needed to get stuck into a project. I felt like I needed to do SOMETHING to try and change the trajectory that I sub-consciously knew my daughter was on. I created a template, and after a fair amount of cutting, sewing and taking apart, and wanting to give up, managed to upholster this couch. It looked really, really good. So good that Nigel was trying to convince me that it should stay in our house rather than Robyn’s apartment. I wasn’t having any of that. In my mind – this couch was part of the answer to a new start for Robyn. This plush black couch, complete with plush red cushions to match her tv stand and a fuzzy grey throw. This was it. She was going to turn the corner and this couch was going to be key. Um……. No.

Fast forward to yesterday. As she has already gone through in her latest blog post (which you can read here: https://robynfloraca.wordpress.com), we went back to her apartment. I had been there a few times over the past month, but only to grab a thing or two. Now, as I waited for her to get some clothes, I had a look around. Yesterday was a hard day.

At first glance the couch looked fine, but it wasn’t until you got a bit closer that you noticed things were not as they seemed. This couch, it was clear, had been through quite the ordeal. This couch had a story to tell; this couch had memories. This couch held secrets. Scanning things lying about on the table, coffee tables and floor…. it all came back to the couch.

Over the past few years I have been in very dark and desperate places. Huge anxiety attacks in the middle of the night; crying, pulling my hair, pleading and begging God to supernaturally remove my daughter from wherever she was and bring her to me. On more than one occasion I have driven to her apartment block in the night to sit in my car and wait for her to come or go. My mind would always take me to the worst scenarios I could possibly conjure, and the only way I could calm myself down was to tell myself over and over that it was just my imagination. But now, the couch was telling me all those thoughts were not just my imagination. Standing in the middle of that apartment, staring at the couch, the fact hit me – my anxiety-fuelled thoughts had passed through the fantastical veil and into reality.

I can’t breathe.

Anger has not been the emotion that has prevailed for me. Anxiety, fear, sorrow…. all in great and equal measure. Anger has only surfaced a few times since our first hospital visit five years ago, and it was mainly directed, or rather misdirected towards others. Anger showed up yesterday. Amongst the sadness and anxiety, I could feel anger crawling up to the surface. This couch was supposed to mark a new beginning and it looked like death. This apartment…… the symbol of starting something, of building something…. crumbled under the pressure of substance abuse and depression. The couch wasn’t the answer. I couldn’t fix this. Anger choked me to the point of feeling numb.

I couldn’t fix this.

By the time we got home we had decided that everything in the apartment was going to be donated or thrown out. The couch – we could sell it. By last night I was clear. The couch, along with its memories and secrets, was going in the trash too.

It was time to start fresh.