Herself speaks.
The house refurbishing: the straw that threatens to break the camel's back.
Home is no longer a respite or a safe place. It is a sensory nightmare: strangers there so often; noise and dust; nothing where it should be; hours and hours and hours and hours and hours spent sorting, boxing up, moving things from one place to another, Tetris-ing a lifetime's worth of possessions of All The Family into different rooms while other rooms are being worked upon; no bed, just a solitary cot surrounded by boxes and miscellany; Offspring the Third's cats out of sorts, not able to roam comfortably, meowing and poking me in the eye in the middle of the night. (The rabbits, mercifully unbothered.)
Won't it look nice when it is done, people say. Yes, it will indeed. It will be lovely. Meanwhile, the sensory nightmare continues, the expense climbs, and the amount of time and mental space occupied by the project grows. Relentless positivity about how it will be when it is finished, is not soothing my frayed nerves right now.
I know this shall pass. It shall pass like a kidney stone.
And meanwhile, outside life continues: work is busy; volunteering is an enormity; other obligations continue apace.
Some days -- many days -- it seems as though no one communicates with me, whether by text, email, or otherwise, unless they need something from me. The needs, larger and smaller, come from all corners. 'Tis my fault, really, for being the Reliable Person. People are relying on me. No one to blame but myself.
No one asks how I'm doing. (Once upon a time, my lovely Daddy used to ask. But as we know, he is gone and at peace. You deserve peace, Daddy. Rest easy.)
How am I? Overwhelmed. Tired. Annoyed. One foot in front of the other, one day at a time. One hour at a time.
What do I need? I need peace. It's in short supply right now, though.
I need space and time to relax, to put things away where they belong, to listen to silence, to be alone. I need the comfort of company of people who don't expect me to anticipate and take care of a multitude of things at any given moment, who would like to talk about things Not Political (because whoooooooooo boooooooy that's a whole 'nother level of stress and anger), next to whom I could sit in the same way that the small dogs used to sit next to me, once upon a time.
I keep sighing. As Offspring the Third once quoted from somewhere, "If I sigh loudly enough, all my problems will disappear." Perhaps that will be true.
In the meanwhile, we try to find music to carry us through. Until we can grow wings.
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