As a kid I was always pretty neat. I can only remember one time as a small child my mother coming in to clean my room. When I was in the third grade I finally had my very own room. I was the youngest and was given the smallest room in the house. By forth grade my brother was forced to give up his bigger room in trade for my smaller room. I was in Heaven. Everything had a place, and everything stayed in it's place.
Compliments weren't passed around in my house for anything. When my parents got divorced my older sister moved in with her boyfriend, my older brother spent most of his time staying with friends, and that left my mother and I alone. I was an honor student in advanced classes, and I'd come home and clean up the house and get a pot of coffee made for my mom. I got compliments all the time over how good I was at cleaning. The only compliments I was ever paid.
Fast forward some years and I had a very jerk boyfriend. He was very verbally and physically abusive. I stayed because it was better than going back home. He'd come home and take his shirt off followed by throwing it over the back of the chair in the living room. If the next day he came in and that shirt was still there he'd yell at me for how filthy the house was. Never mind the fact that the only thing "dirty" about the house was the shirt and the rinsed out bowl in the sink from the soup I had for lunch, because I spent the whole day in bed sick.
Fast forward some more years. My daughter Hope is a Kindergartner, Tyler is a toddler, and I watch other peoples toddlers out of the house. I thought that despite all those little kids the house was pretty clean. Sure, I couldn't keep the toys up ALL the time, I didn't always have time to get the clothes out of the dryer, but I thought I was still doing a good job. My husband didn't think so. He always complained how terrible everything looked and how I only ever cleaned if company was coming over. The only thing I did different for company than any other time was make sure they didn't step on any Lego's.
Fast forward again and I am in the best relationship I've ever been in. My husband wouldn't hurt the feelings of a fly. There is no one in this world who has lower expectations of me than him. If I honestly NEVER cleaned house, he wouldn't say anything. He'd do it himself if it needed to be done.
For the first year or so of our living together relationship I cleaned the same as I always did. Our house was always clean, not accounting for the bedrooms of the children. Although I regularly made and helped them do it. Somewhere along the way, I just couldn't take it anymore. I'd go to cook dinner and the dishes wouldn't be where they belonged. It was a day in and day out process of fixing everything, because everyone was being messy and for the first time ever someone was HELPING and was doing it....wrong.
So, ever since I have been in and out of a funk. Battling between the state of the house is driving me crazy, BUT they are "taking advantage of me" is driving me more crazy. Here lately the funk is all encompassing. I'm really kind of upset about everything in my life. And really it comes back to the house. If I was happy with it, everything else would be small potatoes....I think.
Earlier this week I wrote about the Laundry Nazi. My husband got a good chuckle out of it, and then said "What about the kitchen?" *sighs* That's when I said it. That's when I laid it out there. There are things I want done and I'm not happy with the way they're done, but I feel like I can't do it because y'all are "taking advantage of me." Seriously? Did I just tell this laid back, not a care in the world, whatever makes you happy, man that I think he (and the kids) take advantage of my compulsive habits? Yeah....I did.
He ever so gently explained to me that it's not taking advantage of someone when they want things done a certain way and they think no one else can do it right.
Who am I punishing? My ex's for being total jerks to me? For being mean to me and never offering to help with what they claimed I was doing an unsatisfactory job with? They don't care. They didn't care then. Why would they care now? Am I punishing myself? Am I self fulfilling every bad thing anyone has ever said about me? What kind of crap is that?! Am I punishing the best guy I've ever known? Heck no. 'Cus he loves me regardless and doesn't care if I'm Suzy Homemaker or not.
I have seriously just been punishing myself. I've made myself unhappy with me and it reflects off of everything else in my life.
I get mad because I tell someone to go hang up their coat in the hall closet, and when I look in after them it looks like a bomb went off in there. I get mad when I go to get a dish and can't find it because it's somewhere it doesn't belong or when I go to get something and have to fight through a bajillion things in front of it that don't belong there. I get mad when I stack things so that they all fit just so, and I open the cabinet to find an avalanche. I get mad, and I squish it inside.
I then squish myself inside. I set myself up to have things that wouldn't be so bad affect me as if they were big things, because I've weakened my self image over this. I tell myself that now there's nothing that can be done over it. New habits are formed, and the husband works from home so I have to be quiet. I lock myself in my bedroom so I don't disturb him while he works.
My husband came to me today and begged to help. Just tell him what's wrong so he can fix it. UGH! It's NOT you. It's ME. I am seriously broken. I have to fix this. I broke it. I have to find it in me to fix it. So, I downloaded a music app onto my phone. Grabbed a pair of headphones. Stuck my phone in my pocket with the headphones in, and then put my ear defenders on over the top of them. Now I can't hear him, and he can't hear the jams.
I am on a mission. I've got to get back to me. I've got to FIX the damage that I let people who don't mean anything to me cause. I've got to fix the damage I caused to myself. I'm going to let the sun back in. This weekend I'm going to fix me while I fix all the details about my house that I don't like. Cabinets, baseboards, dusting, walls and doors... It's all about the details. With each detail I fix on the outside I can and will fix details on the inside.
They are not taking advantage of me!
Now that I've gotten that off my chest. I've got some more walls that need scrubbing.
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