Little things putting me over the edge

[Losttogether]

I'm barely coping today. Most days I manage. Today...nope.

My husband and I bought a house. Older, needed renos, he was very handy and was going to do the work room by room. 7 days after moving in we got the terminal cancer diagnosis. Fast forward 4 years and I can no longer tolerate the purple kitchen (and trust me this is purple like nothing you've ever seen before. I can't afford to do the whole kitchen new so I decide to keep the existing white cabinets and replace the floor and counters (these were the purple parts). I found a nice floor and had it installed and picked a beautiful granite for the counters. All was going smoothly until they cut the granite wrong and it couldn't be used. They had no more of that colour. So I spend months looking for something else that will go with my (already installed) new floor and finally find something I love. It was installed yesterday and I was so pleased right up until the guy accidentally used colour enhancer instead of sealant on it. It has completely changed the look and the colour and I hate it. I have no more energy to deal with this stuff. I just can't cope with every single thing going wrong all the time. This has truly put me over the edge.  I give up on life.

I want my life back. I want my husband back. I want someone else to deal with my screwed up countertops. The installer just told me I was too fussy.

[Trying]

I totally get it, making every decision alone, dealing with every crisis big or small alone. It gets exhausting.

 

The installer screwed up, whether or not you are "fussy" he didn't do his job right. He needs to fix it or refund a percentage of the installation. I hate questioning if I'm being taken advantage of because I am a woman with no male backup. I'm trying to learn to be more assertive but it doesn't come naturally to me.

 

Big tight hugs!

[widowat33]

If you are not pleased with it and are paying for it then I think you have every right to voice your disapproval. I recently installed new countertops and the person who measured them did it wrong, resulting in having to cut them so they would fit. Now there are tiny chips down the seam. Sigh. In fact I've been doing a lot of work around here and nothing seems to be going right either. It is frustrating, and I've said many times, if my dh was alive this would not be happening. We would be dealing with this together and since he was more aggressive he would have handled things a lot differently than I have!

It is hard doing this alone..

Sending hugs

[canadiangirl]

Losttogether, I totally hear you.  The little things are piling up and getting me down.  The bigger things, like renos and fixes to our moneypit fixer-upper...well, I just can't even manage them, yet.  My handy DH was diagnosed with cancer six days after we closed on our fixer-upper.  Many of the renos, big and small, never got done.  Solidarity.

[Virgo]

First, I'm sorry that you are dealing with all of this by yourself. I'm sure it's difficult even without all of the mistakes being made since you planned on doing all of this with your husband. Definitely have the installer replace the countertops. It was his mistake. You're not getting what you paid for and granite isn't cheap. If you're anything like me, you'll never be happy with them if you keep them. Don't settle!

[hikermom]

I'm so sorry. I get the problem of knowing what you can and should do but not having the energy or reserves to actually do it. Every little fight you have to engage in to get what you know is right and just is exhausting. I have, more times than I care to admit, felt like it was just easier to let something go than to demand it be fixed. In the long run, though, I'm always happier when I've stood my ground.

 

This widow thing is weird. Some days I can have major, or minor, things happen and shrug them off with a "hell, I've been through worse. This is small shit and I no longer sweat the small shit because I know what is important in life." Other days, a little thing like a bear in my trash can send me spiraling into "I can't take one more thing that I have to deal with because I have too much on my plate already. I've overwhelmed and exhausted and just can't do it."

 

Why am I able to see things in perspective some days and not others? No idea. But I think we all can empathize with that feeling of wanting to just throw up our hands and yell "you do it because I quit!!!" 

 

Right now I'm fully convinced that home ownership sucks.

[Jen]

I totally get it, making every decision alone, dealing with every crisis big or small alone. It gets exhausting.

 

AMEN!!!!!!!!!!

 

I'm sick of being where the buck stops. Even my mother expects me to make all the decisions now. I'm a Libra, I don't do decisions well!

 

I want someone else to be the grown up. I'm tired of adulting, especially when I'm doing it alone.

[Losttogether]

Hikermom,

      'A little thing like a bear in my trash can...'

 

Laughed out loud when I read this!  You consider a bear in your trash little?  I'd completely freak out. I feel like a big wuss now. Thanks for making me smile and giving me the strength and resolve to not back down!

 

[Carey]

Adulting sucks.  Just plain sucks.  I had to leave our house and bought a doublewide, a 1999 doublewide at that.It was immaculate and pretty and well taken care of though, so I unhappily bought it.  My teens are singlehandedly trying to destroy it. There are holes in the walls in their rooms. They've broken tile in the kitchen, scratched the linoleum, spilled bleach on the carpet, let the cats make messes ... you get the picture.  And the bad thing? I don't give a flying ****.  I want to care, well sometimes I want to care. I  just flat out don't. Hate the house. Hate what it represents. Hate that I'm back in a trailer so I try to be away from it as much as I can.  So that being said, I give you major kudos for even taking the step to do anything home improvement wise.  I can understand how you feel like if one more thing goes wrong you'll scream (and probably no one will hear).  I probably wouldn't say anything to the guy myself just because I've lost my gift I used to have for confrontation, but I really hope you talk to the installer and find a way to make it right. You shouldn't have to be unhappy with service you paid for and I'm sure it wasn'tcheap. He's not doing you any favors, you are paying HIM.  And word of mouth is bad for contractors, etc. so maybe let him know you could tell SOOO many people how unhappy you are with your kitchen. 

[Mancino]

 

I'm sick of being where the buck stops. Even my mother expects me to make all the decisions now. I'm a Libra, I don't do decisions well!

 

 

Ha, Jen...I'm a Libra, too!  The chronic indecision is debilitating for me some days.  I can work myself into such a frenzy weighing the options on the smallest of decisions.    I was always a bit in awe how DH could just assess any situation and decide what to do fairly quickly.  I was both annoyed by and jealous of that!  My husband used to tease me about my inability to decide on the little things, especially at restaurants.  If it was a place that had one of those large, several-pages-long menus, he'd sigh and say "we're going to be here all night".  ;D

 

As for the OP,

I'm dealing with replacing a couple of old, run-down appliances in my kitchen.  I had been putting this off because I had hoped to have sold this condo by now & moved, but that hasn't happened (see above about my inability to decide on almost anything).  Because this is an older complex, apparently I don't have the proper gas shut-off valve required (it's in the basement; needs to be directly behind the stove now), so the store won't do the installation.    So, I'm sitting here today waiting on someone else to come take care of it.  (I don't mind trying to tackle some jobs myself, but dealing with gas just scares me). 

 

Sigh!

[MrsT85]

 

This widow thing is weird. Some days I can have major, or minor, things happen and shrug them off with a "hell, I've been through worse. This is small shit and I no longer sweat the small shit because I know what is important in life." Other days, a little thing like a bear in my trash can send me spiraling into "I can't take one more thing that I have to deal with because I have too much on my plate already. I've overwhelmed and exhausted and just can't do it."

 

Why am I able to see things in perspective some days and not others? No idea. But I think we all can empathize with that feeling of wanting to just throw up our hands and yell "you do it because I quit!!!" 

 

I'm with losttogether when it comes to that bear-in-the-garbage not being a little thing   I live in an apartment in the middle of Chicago though, so I think a bear wandering down my alley would mean civilization has broken down and I have bigger things to worry about! 

 

But yeah, I do the back-and-forth with being bothered by things too.  Sometimes I am lucky enough to posses both the perspective and proper state of mind to handle small things with grace, but sometimes (especially lately) I feel like all of the awful things I've had happen to me have completely worn away what I think of as my "emotional callous" and every new upset will have me in tears, questioning what about my life is even still worth the effort.

 

It's been almost two and a half years for me, and I still struggle with just being flat-out emotionally exhausted most of the time. 

[Justin]

I hear you guys - like hikermom wrote, some times i am amazed that I can keep it together letting things roll off my back. Othertimes? Not so good.

 

- Hotel rooms for out of town trip last weekend were nasty. Hated it, but eventually let it go and sucked it up and had a good time.

- Car that I am upside-down on? Some interior wood-grain trim recently cracked and then I discovered peeling clear coat on the bumper yesterday. Oh yeah, accidentally bumped into another car a couple of weeks ago and cracked paint on the other side of the bumper. Now it's worth even less, but "thems the breaks"

 

 

Then, I got in a weird place yesterday and totally lost perspective. Totally ass-backwards. Had a melt-down this morning, went in to work late and have been on the verge of crying all day. I just want to be a good, normal person and not feel on the verge of crazy. At least my therapy session today was productive...

[hikermom]

Hikermom,

      'A little thing like a bear in my trash can...'

 

Laughed out loud when I read this!  You consider a bear in your trash little?  I'd completely freak out. I feel like a big wuss now. Thanks for making me smile and giving me the strength and resolve to not back down!

 

Heheheh - my heart was pounding a mile a minute and I jump a mile at every little noise I hear when I'm walking the dogs at night now! I'm a big marshmallow! A funny story I just remembered: one time camping with DH, we heard a noise outside the tent that I thought might have been a bear. I made shooing noises at it which brought DH to tears laughing and saying, "sneezing at it isn't going to scare it away." Turns out it was probably a raccoon. I did not sneeze at the bear the other night - I turned on my car panic button to scare it off!

 

We all have moments, days, weeks when we feel weak and unable to take on one more thing. That is normal and probably happened when our spouses were alive but we had someone to share the burden with. That is one of the things I really miss. Be gentle with yourself - we all get it!