The Dark Side of House Restoration
I am so out of the closet about my lifelong relationship with depression that it has become very old news.
But if you are wondering why I have started, but not completed or posted umpteen (that IS a number, right?) entries on the house lately, blame my biochemistry.
We cleared some time on the docket to experiment with my thyroid and my sleep patterns. In the twinkling of an eye, I go from having projects to BEING a project. :)
Strangely, during my lifetime, the very same wellspring in my head that was able to produce art and poetry and music also coughed up an interesting amount of despair and dark comedy and self-created isolation and fear earlier on.
So, what does this have to do with an old stuffed house?
Well, plenty actually.
Living in chaos with little to be able to control but your own perspective on the situation, occasionally faced with what seems to be only a snail-like progress, can test the most placid of people.
For people like me, it can be a real obstacle course. In fact, I've heard it said that a few old house restorations have driven folks over "The Edge". Thank goodness I've been over "The Edge" and know how to eventually get back! Though it is...without a doubt...the most indescribable experience ever. There are really no words though many have tried to string adjectives together or run metaphors up the flagpole to see who salutes them.** "Crummy" doesn't even begin to address it. Neither does "numb" nor "bleak".
Tight-fisted control used to see me through these pre-"old stuffed house" times. In the condo, I knew that I could count on the exact number of spoons in a drawer and the perfect arrangement of sofa pillows and dining room chairs. This old house says, "HA!" to that kind of predictability.
(I think that my addiction to the ideal and the perfect started pretty early. I have been told that at my 5th birthday party...driven into pre-party panic...I actually practiced the game of dropping the clothes-pins in the bottle before the visitors arrived to calm my performance anxiety. So I would "get it right" when they came. That's pretty fierce for age 5. And why a lot of corporations love people like me. "Hmm, you'll stay for 15 or 19 hours today to get that presentation absolutely perfect? Okay. You'll work like that on a regular basis? Okay.")
So, as the super hero known as "Idealism Girl...Woman for Advocacy", it is necessary every once in a while to throw my cape over my head, let myself sink into imperfection and have a good, hard cry about it.
At least I know I'm in good company...Mike Wallace, Bill Styron, George Stephanopoulos, Paul Simon, Dar Williams, Phil Graham. That's just a few of many. One in eight in the U.S., so I'm told. Amazing, all of the functioning and creativity going on out there, even with this albatross.
The laptop melted down about the same time I did. Aaron took the laptop back to the store, but kept me. And I think that was really nice of him.
So it's back to the fray. I'm out of bed and using my allotted active hours today to clean up the basement.
Sorry for the diversion. But if I'm gonna keep it real, well, you've gotta know the real.
**Private joke. Leftover from old marketing project. Sorry.
(3)
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Comments
J- My husband gets on me for this and his mantra is "there is no such thing as perfect". As soon as one thing in the house becomes improved enough to be acceptable (read as:close to perfect), I am already fixated on the next obstacle to perfect (bad stair tread, piece of trim that needs replacing, etc). And in that, NOT focusing on how great the close-to-perfect finished item is.
I find it fascinating with your (our) personality that you have taken on this project. I imagine somewhere in it there is therapy to be gained, like densensitization therapy- to face the chaos and the ugly underneath and create perfection (or at least a good looking house) where no one imagined it could exist. My auntie K says that her old houses were like needy children she never had (she suffers from depression as well and did not think she'd be a good mother).
The weekend just ended, we got 3 days of work done and now Monday morning all I can think about is the stuff to do over the next 3 days ("what did we get done on Friday again?") Without a blog, it all becomes a blur.
I think you are doing fantastic, much better than myself, at adapting and surviving and your house will be the proof.
Carol
Posted by: Carol | October 18, 2004 7:53 AM
Man! Sadly, I find another parallel between your lives and ours.
I've written this post over several times now.
This morning, Steph caught me standing at the kitchen counter vaguely staring at a half-stripped windowframe... even after the coffee was ready. I had a bug all last week and fell behind at work. Brought some stuff home from work on Friday, but spent all of Saturday sleeping off my virus, and felt so much better on Sunday that I just had to get outside and get to some of the work that's piled up out there. There are privet hedges that must go, boxwood to transplant before it gets colder... etc. So I'm staring at the window frame, and I couldn't say what I was thinking except that it wasn't anything much to worry about, just a couple hrs work to catch up and no deadline... but it was swallowing me like a strong tide and I couldn't quite make myself move until Steph very sweetly reminded me that if I didn't get moving this could be the start of a spiral; to head upstairs to the shower, and just start the day, no matter what I was imagining it might be. And she gave me a smile with her whole self in it so that I could move. I don't know what I was imagining, but I did get myself together to face it. All is fine and now I can't imagine what was keeping me rooted to the spot, pounding in my head, and pulling my thoughts so many diferent ways at once that they became incomprehensible.
How the easy stuff can be so hard still eludes me, even after 30 years.
So, I don't know, J, but suffice it to say, I feel you. Be well and take care.
Posted by: Nathan | October 18, 2004 11:13 AM
Wow! I had no idea that they were other "functioning unipolars" (FU's) on the blog circuit :)
Just remember our rally cry, people!
"We're HERE! And...we're, um, DEPRESSED! And we're GOING BACK TO BED!!"
Posted by: jm | October 21, 2004 8:39 PM