escape « Slightly Unhinged

Ever have one of those days when it seems like everything is going wrong? Of course you have…we all know how much it sucks to be having a day like that. I’m in the middle of one of those days (possibly one of those weeks…maybe even one of those months or years) and I’m seriously close to running away.

To start with, my house is still in complete and utter chaos from our multiple incomplete “home improvement” projects. We’ve lived in this house for six years now and we’ve done so much damage that sometimes I think we’d be better off to just bomb the place and start over from scratch. After six years of abuse from our multiple pets (2 large dogs and 4 cats), a rowdy kid and all of his rough-housing friends, my husband who means well but often ends up breaking more things than he fixes, and my general lack of housekeeping and home maintenance skills, the house is in a pitiful state. The necessary repairs are too numerous to list but among them are:

- repairing the stucco by the back door where one of the dogs did a considerable amount of damage by frantically pawing at the wall next to the door when he felt he’d been left outside too long (Note: the dog is neurotic and freaks out if you don’t let him back in to the house as soon as he is finished going potty…and this is only one of his many eccentricities. He’s a difficult case that I think would make even the Dog Whisperer lose his patience.)

- patching several holes in the wall in my son’s room and replacing the doors to his bedroom, bathroom, and closet – all of which he’s managed to put holes in while engaging in various forms of jackassery

- pulling out all of our horribly stained carpet and replacing it with something that will hold up well under constant abuse and won’t show stains from cat vomit, blood, mud tracked in by the dogs, etc.

- repairing and repainting the stucco and trim on the front porch where the little savages my son calls friends like to hang out and kick at the wall (Why do they congregate on the front porch and chip away at our stucco, you ask? I couldn’t even begin to tell you the answer to that question.)

The worst part is that the things I’ve mentioned are only the tip of the iceberg. I had a minor breakdown over the general state of disrepair a few weeks ago and in an attempt to console me as I was curled up in the fetal position sobbing hysterically, my husband asked me to make a list of everything that needed to be done and promised that he would work diligently each weekend to cross things off the list. I made the list and things seemed to start off well: we cleared out our bedroom and pulled the carpet up so that we could experiment with stained concrete flooring. Of course, clearing out the bedroom meant moving all of our bedroom furniture to the living room and most of our living room furniture to the den/office, which was unpleasant but I figured I could easily live with that for a week or two while we got the project done. Unfortunately, several weeks have now passed and I’m still living with my bedroom in the living room and other than pulling up the carpet, nothing else has happened in the bedroom. No progress has been made on any of the other projects either. I’m almost at the end of my rope.

I’m a person who needs privacy and order in my life…living in a chaotic environment with no place I can go to be by myself is beyond unsettling to me. When I look around at all the disorder around me, I feel like my very world is falling apart…and it’s like my crumbling house has become a metaphor – the very embodiment of the way I feel my life is falling apart. Completing these unfinished projects on my own is beyond my abilities and I can’t afford to hire someone to take over and put my house in order…so I feel trapped, which in turn makes me feel like running away. I’m becoming increasingly tempted to pull out my dog-eared copy of SCRAM: Relocating Under a New Identity and head for South America. I don’t need much to make me happy…the only things I need are my laptop, a few books, and some companionship (my kid and my cats…or wait, maybe just the cats – they don’t talk back, after all) – as long as I had those things, I could live happily anywhere. I’d be perfectly content living as simply as a monk (hmmm…maybe I ought to look in to that) – the idea of giving up most of my worldly possessions is very appealing to me right now.

I’m hoping that things will get better soon and then I won’t have to flee. If I could just get a few of these projects finished so that I could put my house back together, then I’d feel much better…a person can only deal with so much chaos at one time, you know? But just in case things don’t improve, I’m formulating a plan. If I post my next update from Argentina, you’ll know I finally reached the absolute end of my rope.

So the last few weeks have been really crappy: I have been feeling worse than I have in ages, my husband and I haven’t been getting along, my son is being a pain in the ass, the house is a mess, the homeowner’s association is threatening to fine us over our “unkempt” yard, the list of reasons for my melancholy mood goes on and on. Usually, when things aren’t going well in my life, I tend to just shut down – I start feeling overwhelmed and unable to cope so I end up spending much of my time sleeping in an attempt to avoid dealing with reality. My waking hours are spent leafing through my dog-eared copy of “SCRAM: Relocating Under A New Identity” while day-dreaming about leaving everything behind and starting fresh somewhere in South America. Needless to say, these haven’t been very effective coping strategies.

I’ve come to the realization that I haven’t been taking good enough care of myself and if I don’t start paying more attention to my own needs, I’m going to suffer a complete breakdown. I don’t say this just for dramatic effect – I’ve found myself teetering on the edge of a breakdown on several occasions. When I don’t feel well and my resources are limited, I spend all of my energy taking care of everyone else because I feel like a bad mother or a bad wife if I choose to do something for myself over doing something for my family. It’s not that I enjoy playing the martyr, I just haven’t placed enough importance on my own needs and making sure that my family understands how meeting those needs impacts my overall well-being. This needs to change immediately. I’ve made some important decisions this weekend about changes I can make to give myself more time for the things that are important to me…now all I need to do is follow through and make sure it actually happens.