So I went to see my therapist last Saturday and basically balled my eyes out for an hour. I am pretty sure I have posted about my inability to express and define emotions before. Nana and her "never let them see you cry" advice carries over in the long term in my life. So even when I am sitting in my therapist's office, it is not super common for tears to show up. I am still the logical vulcan you all know just sitting with her and rationalizing emotions that I am refusing to actually feel.
Welp, not this week. Apparently, this week was vent-fest. Tear-fest. Ugly cry-fest. Snot-fest. I guess I have been retaining a lot of emotions throughout the house project that exploded out of my tear ducts in that hour. I kept starting sentences with, "I am sure I am just overwhelmed, but..." as if I had to give a reason for being emotional to my therapist. I'm nuts, I know.
I am usually pretty good at keeping my shit together to a ridiculous, anal-retentive degree. But I have noticed in the past week or so that things like "it is what it is" or "I don't really know what to do next" are coming out of my mouth in an alarming frequency. I am kind of used to Plan A not working out in my life. I mean, Plan A rarely works for me. I guess I am just not used to being on like Plan M because honestly, that just feels a whole lot like no plan at all and I am just winging it.
I am a person of extremes: truly anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive plans OR flying by the seat of my pants. Is there a form of bi-polar planning? That's what this feels like.
Backstory: my husband and I closed on our new house on 05-23. We ripped out the kitchen two days later. Like, we removed the kitchen cabinets and the furdown above them and you could see into the attic level of ripped out the kitchen. It was necessary because we needed electrical work done in those walls prior to installing a new kitchen, and we wanted that to happen before we moved in. So mission accomplished.
I went back to work for the week and we returned the following weekend. The plan was to replace the tile floor in the main bathroom over a few days (I had Friday and Monday off). But what should have been a simple remove the tile, put down self-leveler, lay the tile, and grout the tile, turned into something else entirely. The subfloor was rotted. So we had to rip out everything down to the floor joists, resupport the tub under the house, and replace the rotted wood. So instead of having a new tile floor at the end of that weekend, we had a new subfloor.
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| yeah that's me sitting under our tub |
It was at this point that my husband started talking about his abdomen hurting. To make a long story short, he needs to have his gallbladder out and we think he has a hernia. So he has excruciating pain, alternating between his right side (gallbladder) and left side (hernia). Our little house project that we were so excited about doing together just kind of got trampled on by 43-year-old bodies. It wouldn't have been a big deal if there was an unlimited timeline on this whole thing, but we were supposed to move in at the end of June.
Fast forward through a lot of days of sanding, priming, painting, tiling, grouting, tile and grout repair on the existing bits, waiting on work to be completed by other people (electrician and plumber) and the end of June move-in did not happen. So we asked for an extension on our current lease for an extra couple of weeks and we move on July 12th instead.
In the middle of all of this, the main sewer line to the project house I did in 2016/2017 (where my sister currently resides) caved in and required replacing. Like dig up the yard and replace the whole cast iron drain pipe level of replacing. This was on top of us renovating our new house and paying rent and a house note simultaneously. I started describing our reality as a state of hemorrhaging money because we were free-bleeding at that point.
And this is how I arrived at my current state of overwhelmed and the ugly-cry fest with my therapist. I guess the good news is that I did feel better when I left her office (and drove to the house to work on it). I think I was trying to be super strong for my husband who is pretty much devastated that his body failed him and we aren't doing this together like we intended.
But there is light at the end of the tunnel. The house is pretty much in a state of readiness for us to move in at this point with the exception of a few things. We still need to organize and remove all of the tools and construction supplies from my husband's music space. The privacy film I bought for the front windows needs to be put up in the living room. And everything needs to be cleaned up from construction dust as well as the previous owners.
They were nasty, y'all. And I am not fucking Martha Stewart or anything, or typically judgey about a mess. I would say I usually live in a state of organized chaos. It looks messy, but I know where everything is. But they were just gross. Like I thought the tile was ruined in the shower but it was just dirty gross. Like they must have some really strong immune systems gross. Like I thought it was weird they left their brooms and other cleaning supplies but I have realized it is because they never actually used them anyhow gross.
I digress. I am still overwhelmed. Mostly because we aren't really packed yet. There is still a lot to do before the projects are complete. I have been saying this sentence a lot: "I can do that after we move in." So I will be a busy little bee for quite a while.
But one super positive note (and sort of the point of this post) is that I haven't been binging on food every day as a coping mechanism. Pizza day at work was still a challenge I failed. My boss buys pizza for the office on the first of every month. And it sits there smelling up the office all day and I have this 7 hour battle with myself about eating more pizza all afternoon. I ate 4 pieces of pizza that day. I realize that is not a lot of pizza for a person with a normal sized tummy. In fact, that is probably the number of slices that everyone in my office ate that day. But it was way too much for me and I felt ill and regretted it. So, I'm putting that day in the L column.
But there have been plenty of other opportunities for me to just EAT. And I haven't. So I guess I have worked myself into a place of being able to be overwhelmed and not always binge. And I have progressed into having some emotions leak out.
Conclusion: replacing your rotted psyche is a lot harder than a rotted bathroom floor.
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