Day 19.

Day 19The only time I’ve left the house is to go to Masters, Bunnings, the Bowl, or work.

We’re still sleeping, eating and working in our living room. I’m completely and undeniably over it.

I don’t know where ANYTHING is anymore… I can’t find clean clothes… I can’t find what I put down 5 minutes before, thanks to the sea of sanding paraphernalia…

I got so sick from sanding that I’ve been coughing up lumps of reconstituted paint for the last 3 days… and I have to go back for more tonight.

This is beyond ridiculous.

All I want is a good nights sleep in MY room… with MY things… but I have no idea where any of them are… It’s like some deluded persons version of camping. I HATE CAMPING.

Here’s the thing. I don’t want outside help – because to be 100% honest it’s more stress than it’s worth… people walk into your house with the deluded idea that they “own” some part of it because they helped sand an architrave or cut in a room. No. Not after everything we’ve been through. Every speck of dirt on that property is OURS (well technically, 80% of it’s BankWest’s) and it makes me physically ill to imagine that someone else might assume they have some claim on it just because they helped out, once.

This house has almost killed us so many times now… I’m not sure I want to keep it once it’s finished. We’d never make the money we spent on it back… but some days I really struggle to come up with happy memories of the place.

We’re getting really hammered over being committed to getting this done. Which I find really hard to swallow. We’re finally knuckling down and doing what’s right for us and people are upset because we’re saying no to events? It’s that whole thing I talked about before – the walking a mile in someones shoes…. I understand people want to see us, I’m always touched by how deeply people care for us…  But we HAVE to get this done… we’re LIVING in our living room. I have no office…. Aside from that, the most pressing issue is for us is my upcoming surgery. I need a space where I can be comfortable and almost sedated for up to 10 days… right now, as things stand, that is not available. Come the 21st of April – that could happen within 14 days. We don’t talk about that because people give me grief for another admission – but it HAS to be done, it NEEDS to be fixed and I NEED somewhere I can recover.

Day 19It’s days like today, after reading and hearing all the things that are said behind our back because we’re quietly taking care of our own business that test my new resolve of “trying not to be an arsehole”. It’s times like these I see how easy it is to slip down to that same level and get amongst it. But I won’t. They’re all good people. They just don’t understand our situation – and frustratingly they don’t want to.

Things are what they are. We’re finally doing what we needed to do 5 years ago. We’re taking responsibility for traveling rather than fixing things around the house. We dug ourselves into this hole – now we’re digging ourselves out. Slowly. Painfully. While I hate the situation as it stands, particularly the BO consequences of sanding for 5 hours straight, I know we’re doing the right thing. And THAT is the saving grace. THAT is the thing preventing me from responding to all the negativity we’re being subjected to. Well, that, and the fact I’m physically too tired to lift my hands above my head.

The road to our ultimate goals fucking sucks. It’s bumpy… we have to go the long way round obstacles… it’s dirty…. exhausting…. but… we’re on the road to “our happy place”. How many people can say that? How many people who are slamming us can say “we did everything in our power to be happy”? Very few I would imagine. I would go as far as to say that some don’t even know what would make them happy – and how to make a start getting there.

For all the bad and the frustrating – we’re on the right track. We’re doing ok. That’s kind of a big deal – being able to say that. So if we take nothing else from the last few weeks, we need to accept that we were prepared to make sacrifices to get to a place where we can just be happy.

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