@RickiTarr I'm planning to start looking for a house to buy at the end of the year (although it'll probably take ages) and this week I've visited some towns and villages with which I'm not very familiar, to see if they're places I would be okay moving to. Today I went to a couple of nearby villages I'd never been to.

Except when I got there, I realised I had been out that way before. Back when I used to drive, which was a very many years ago.

And back then, I was living in a tiny shitty one bed flat, with no possibility of anything better, buried under almost £50k of debt from the abuser. And today I remembered having driven past a terrace of old miner's houses, with lovely views, wishing I could be a normal person who was able to consider living somewhere like that.

I walked past those houses today, I had no idea until I was almost at the end of the terrace, and realised: maybe if one of those houses came on sale, it could be somewhere I might be able to get.

(It probably won't happen, this is more of a figurative thing than me saying 'I'll definitely buy that house')

And I suddenly realised how far I'd come since those grim grim days. Yes, it's taken ages, it's not as if I got a better job in the interim or came into a bunch of money. I had to work so hard to pay those fucking debts off. But whatever I had to do to get to this point, the fact is, I am here now.

So I guess that's a win over the awful things in my past, which I often feel I'll never escape from.