BARELY HOLDING ON

Chapter 8 – Bouncing From Pillar to Post

The separation is complete, as are the bankruptcy proceedings. The paperwork sits in boxes I could carry with one hand if I didn’t fear the weight of them. The archives of our old life are stacked in spare rooms I rotate through like a kid changing coats at a school parade. Each room has its own light, its own scent, its own way of pretending to feel permanent. The welcome is worn out at each place, not acrimonious, just tired. It’s time, we tell ourselves, to keep moving, to see what movement offers when stability has become a borrowed concept.

I am bouncing, as the title says, from pillar to post. The metaphor isn’t fancy here. It’s literal in a way that stings, pillars of rooms, pillars of routines, pillars of hope that wobble when you touch them too hard. There’s no grand plan as much as a series of small, stubborn choices to stay upright. The edges of my life are still sharp with the glassy ache of past decisions, but the air across these rooms is different. It feels cooler in the eyes, more precise in the hands, even when the fever in my body, glandular fever, a stubborn guest, threads through the days and nights like a feverish current you can’t quite ride out.

I eventually land in Sackville, in a caravan parkowned by a client too stubborn to worry about labels like bankruptcy, perched near the Hawkesbury River. The client has arranged a place in a large caravan, the kind of practical shelter that doesn’t pretend weight isn’t involved. The river is a long, patient animal, its surface a pale, glassy skin that catches the sky and returns it in a slightly bruised reflection. The air carries dampness, the scent of damp timber and resin, a hint of salt that rubbed your face the minute you step outside. The light sits low, even on clear days, like someone measured it and found it just enough to keep you from drifting away. I touch the caravan’s wheel on the inside and feel the texture of the rubber, soft here, firmer there, breathe in the faint tang of old diesel and new promise.

The river’s sound is a constant: a family of small waves patting the bank, often by passing water skiers, then pulling back with a patient insistence that feels almost like a conversation. It is the quiet sound of endurance, a current that doesn’t hurry. There is a wind, too, usually mild, sometimes a gust that carries the smell of damp earth and distant rain. These sensory threads anchor me when my thoughts start to loosen, which they do, in times marked by the kind of fatigue that sits on the ribs and weighs like a stone in a pocket.

The days here are not dramatic, not in the way you might expect a dramatic turning moment to be. They are slow, and in the slow I begin to notice how the weight of a body can be measured not by mass alone but by the way it holds a breath. My breath changes. It becomes deliberate, slower, like a coach guiding a runner through a hill. I move with a quiet intention: to the kitchen, to the small desk where I pretend to balance accounts, to the riverbank that catches the pale blue of the sky and holds it, then returns it to me in a slightly different shade of blue.

The people around me, my client, the caravan neighbours, a couple of retirees who keep a long, careful conversation about their past life for the sake of present peace, become the first circle of connection I allow myself to name. They talk softly, as if speaking near a sleeping child. They ask small questions that don’t demand answers so much as acknowledge the weather in the room. I answer in the same way: with measured honesty and the sense that I am not being asked to perform, only to exist.

And then there is the “why” that gnaws quietly in the dark. It’s not a dramatic question, really. It’s the kind of question you ask when you have nothing definitive to hold onto, but you still hold on. Why me? Why now? Why the boys, and why this version of me who feels every surface with more intention than it seems to deserve? The “why” sits like a patient dog beside the bed, not barking, just waiting for a hint of direction. You could tell yourself there is a blueprint for this life, but there isn’t. There are only the moments of choosing posture, stay upright, speak softly, keep moving, and let tomorrow arrive with its own slow, stubborn certainty.

I spend nights in the caravan, the engine of the car in the driveway a separate, distant pulse that reminds me we are in a world where time can be rearranged by the turn of a key. The clock ticks in a way that feels almost mechanical, like a watchmaker’s workshop where tiny gears decide the course of a day you once believed you could orchestrate with a single decision. There are times, especially when I am alone, that the Black Dog returns with a heavier tail. It presses itself between my shoulder blades, its presence not so much a roar as a kept secret, always there, never loud, occasionally painful, always real. It snaps at the edges of my resolve, not with spectacle but with the quiet insistence of a chain pulling at a collar.

These are not scenes of cinematic clarity. They are stitched from ordinary hours that feel thicker than usual because they carry the mark of what happened and what did not happen. The separation, the boxes, the lack of a stable home, the bankruptcy papers stacked in the corner like a small, grim monument, these things do not shout. They settle into the ribs, they attach to the breath, and they redefine how I read the day. You learn to listen to that redefinition, not to argue with it.

There is a meaning to the act of moving forward, even if the forward step is small and shivered with fear. For me, that meaning is anchored in my boys, the raw, bright feasibility of their futures. Tomorrow is not a certainty, but the possibility of a future for them exists. A future that I want to witness. It becomes the needle of a compass that doesn’t point north so much as toward a place where I feel useful again. My hands become instruments of that purpose: I help sort out a backlog of invoices for the old practice, not to pretend the business is thriving but to prove I can set a course and keep to it, even if the course is gentle and slow.

I begin to see the river’s surface differently: not as a backdrop for a holiday or a postcard, but as a reminder that things flow best when they are not forced. The current has a way of revealing where the river has already chosen to go, and the sediment on the bottom, a little dust, a little grit, tells a more honest story than any polished surface ever could. Dust finds its way into every corner; you sweep it, and it returns as if it never left. Yet there is something forgiving in its persistence. It demonstrates a law of sort: the world does not require perfection; it requires someone who returns, who sweeps again, who trusts that light will find a way through the window.

The driving begins to feel less like escape and more like practice. Nights on the road, the endless kilometres to and from work, the endless kilometres picking up the boys for my designated weekend of contact or turning up to be a Scout Leader, my headlights tracing the line of tar, the engine’s tremor in the seat, the slow sweep of taillights ahead, become a form of ritual. I have no desire to perform heroics or pretend a life of easy strength. I want pragmatic endurance: to be the man who will be there when the school council meeting is called to order, when the kids in the neighbourhood need a voice, when a father needs to model something steadier for his sons. The road, in its plain honesty, becomes a teacher. You learn that there are times you must slow to listen to your own heartbeat, and there are times you must push forward, even when the weight of the world sits heavy on your back.

The boys’ potential glows in the back of my mind, the quiet, stubborn light of a future I insist on believing in even when the day presses in from all sides. It isn’t a guarantee; it’s a wager I make with the clock, with the calendar, with the memory of who I was before I learned what the heart could endure. If I am to be of use to them, I must first be of use to the current moment: to the job that pays the rent, to the church hall I help set up for a meeting, to the walks we take after dinner when the air is cooling and the world sounds almost asleep. The practice of being present is a slow, patient one, but it matters. It is the only way I know to build a future that looks like something more than a string of nights spent trying not to fall apart.

The Black Dog remains a constant shape in the room, a heavy coat draped across the couch, an echo in the voice when I try to speak plainly about how I feel. It does not vanish; it does not demand a dramatic sacrifice. It does not become a hero in my story, and I will not let it pretend to be. Instead, I treat it as a weather system, a condition that passes in its own time, sometimes dragging with it a rain that cleans the air, sometimes leaving a sluggish fog that makes the mornings feel slow and almost impossible. I tell you this not to glamorise suffering, but to acknowledge the reality of it without letting it write the entire script. If I am to come back from this wilderness, I’ll do it with the help of people and routines that keep me honest, and with the stubborn love for my boys that acts as a bright compass when the night grows long.

And so the river becomes a friend who does not lecture but shares a simple truth: things can change if you keep showing up. The caravan’s small, steady light gleams through the night like a careful reminder that shelter is not the same as home, but it is a place where a less-than-ideal day can still be pressed into something useful. I learn to talk to the room, to the river, to the engine, as if each were a patient listener. The rhythm of the town, its quiet dinners, its late-night grocery runs, its school bus that passes with the same familiar jolt, begins to form a familiar cadence, a structure around which a life can be arranged again, even if it’s a life reassembled.

You hear the word “hope” and imagine a bright light cutting through the clouds. Hope here is not a bright beam; it’s something slower, more stubborn. It is the practice of turning toward the morning even when the night doesn’t end with a single stroke of good fortune. It is the decision to prepare a path for the boys, to set boundaries, to rehash records with an accountant’s precise eye, to gather the scattered files into something that resembles a plan, even as the plan mutates with every new day. Hope, in this telling, is a quiet, repeated act of alignment: aligning breath with the room’s temperature, aligning hands with the work, aligning tomorrow with the smallest, most practical steps available.

In the end, the decision to rebuild is not a dramatic eruption of will but a slow, careful leaning into work. It means choosing the days when a drive to the city feels necessary, not glamorous, and choosing the days when a conversation with a neighbour about a school committee appointment feels like a lifeline. It means saying yes to the invitation to be a scout leader even when my own body wants to rest and the mind’s harsher critic wants to retreat. It means saying yes to the stiff truth of a smaller life that can hold onto the boys’ future with a pair of steady hands and a patient heart.

And yes, the boys. They are the bright line. Their potential is the reason I keep returning to the day, to the job, to the road that somehow promises to take me to a better version of myself. It’s not a guarantee, no life is. But it is enough to keep the engine running, to keep the wheel turning, to keep the current moving through the river and into a future I can begin to trust.

So you and I stand in this same weather, though our numbers and our challenges may differ. We aren’t alone in the long, quiet work of gathering the pieces and laying them out with care. We aren’t alone in the stubborn choice to try again, to learn to listen more closely to the room, to the road, to the river, to the engine’s patient hum. We aren’t alone in the knowledge that tomorrow matters, that the boys deserve a father who does not disappear into fear or fatigue but shows up, again and again, with a plan, a promise, and a spine of soft, unbroken patience.

The weight remains. The wind shifts. The road remains a line that invites trouble and possibility in the same breath. The river holds its memory of us, our doubts, our small victories, our stubborn love for the future, and keeps a current that knows how to carry us if we let it. The Black Dog is not vanquished here by a single act of bravery. It is named, acknowledged, felt, and then placed into the day as a weather to be weathered, not a master to be obeyed. And in that exchange, the daily choice to keep going, to rebuild, to reach for the next small good, I find a kind of quiet hope: that the tomorrow I hold out for my boys is not a fantasy, but a plan that begins with three things I can control: breath, routine, and a small, stubborn light in the eyes of a child who believes in what comes next.

I sleep in the caravan for now, with the river breathing outside the walls and the engine’s pulse a distant, steady lull. Tomorrow will ask me to light a fire somewhere inside the house I am still rebuilding, to show up at a school council meeting, to sign a document, to answer a client’s call, to stand at the door when the bus arrives with the noise of children and the rustle of coats. It will ask me to keep faith with the boys, to keep faith with what I owe them, and to keep faith with the truth that I am not alone in this road, not when the river remembers my name and the wind carries my breath back to me in a softer, longer line.

If you are reading this and recognising your own silhouette in mine, hear this: you are not alone. The road you travel has edges and quiet corners, but it is also a road you share with others who carry their own light and their own reasons to endure. We are not asking for perfection. We are asking for small arrangements of time, for the courage to keep showing up, for the willingness to be honest about where we hurt, and for the stubborn, stubborn commitment to tomorrow, however long it takes to arrive.

I am not cured at this point, not free of the Black Dog, not grand in my rescues or heroic in my chapters. I am simply a man learning to be with what is real, to align my steps to a future that holds my boys’s potential as its bright, unwavering beacon. I am rebuilding, learning to listen again, learning that there is a road worth walking, even when every light seems to hit a red. I am learning to be someone who can stand in a room that’s not big enough for all the weight of his past and say: tomorrow is there, and I will meet it with two hands and a heart that has learned to listen to the current.

In the smallest acts, the checking of a ledger, the organising of a school council calendar, the slow drive through the night toward a dawn that might just arrive, I find a thread that ties the old life to the new. In that thread is a promise: to be present for the boys, to be honest about the friction of life, to keep moving without pretending that pain does not hurt, and to remind you, always, that you are not alone in this road we share.