I Was Going to Write Last Night

Instead, I Told My Husband I wanted to Sell the House, As-Is

It was 8PM. I was in full-blown ugly cry. Loud sobs. Long tears. Sitting on the dirty dry-wall dust floor of our construction-zone of a house, hands to my face, with yet another setback looming in our futures.

We’re about at the three month mark, and honestly? I’m surprised this hadn’t happened sooner.

I Am Usually the One Who Doesn’t Freak Out

I am absolutely the type of person you want when something goes wrong. Seriously. I’m excellent in crisis mode. Car accident? I’ve already got the insurance on the line and a notepad to take down the claim number. Injury? I’m already assessing if it’s treatable at home or if I’m warming up the car to get over to urgent care.

I am methodical. When others panic, my brain usually switches over to solution-mode.

Last night? It did not.

After it was all said and done—around 9:30PM and our saint of a kitchen cabinet installer left our house, assuring us we’re all good— I started feeling mad with myself. I wasn’t mad at my meltdown—that was a long time coming. I was mad that I fed into my husband’s panic and failed to pull myself together enough to think things through, to calm myself out of an angry tantrum so I could proceed with the order of operations—something, guys, that is my expertise. It’s why I’m so good at my day job, it’s why I know how to get shit done.

Instead, I made myself a bit of a cliche—angry-texting the worker at the house who had caused the issue that made my husband so wild with concern.

There’s a lot of nuance to what I’m about to say next, so just glide over it with me knowing this bit of context—I worked 8 years in the construction industry, and I’m not making a generality, but I’ve had to have my husband speak on my behalf more than a few times because sexism exists and it doesn’t care that I’m the GC, that I know the budget and schedule backwards and forwards, that I know what goes into a project, that I’m handy myself in many ways, that I’m basically an ant with my 5-foot-one stature and can squat a 2x8x10 from the ground, over my head, and up to a second-story window.

Back to what I was getting at—I knew what the frantic tone of my text message was being received as. If you’re a woman—you know it too.

So yeah, I was mad at that.

And Then There Was the Instagram Reel

The other thing I was mad at was that I just got to reading my WIP, before my husband called me after checking on the house, frantic himself. I frickin’ posted about it! Writers Doing Writer Things!

Guys, do you know how long it took me to put that reel together? Too long. Why? Because I’m not good at that stuff (not yet at least, or heck, maybe I don’t even want to be). Point being, I took the longest time queuing up that silly Instagram reel instead of doing the real work that I set out to do before my night got hijacked.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? I spent more time on a reel about writing than actually writing. I spent more time performing “woman who has it together” than actually holding it together. And when the night went sideways, I had nothing left in reserve — not for the crisis, not for my husband, not for myself. Truly a hat trick of dropping the ball.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. This renovation has a way of making everything feel urgent and nothing feel meaningful all at the same time. I’m constantly triaging, constantly in response mode, and the things that are actually mine— the quiet, the work, the page — keep getting bumped to the bottom of the list.

My meltdown last night wasn’t really about the drywall or the cabinets. (It was, I mean, a little.)

It was about the accumulation of small surrenders. The reel instead of the draft. The angry text instead of the calm I’m known for. The floor of a gutted house instead of, I don’t know, a chair. A normal chair. In a finished room. Is that so much to ask???

I’m still here though. Typing this from the other side of it, drywall dust probably still in my hair. That counts for something— maybe even everything.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a cabinet installer to send a very sincere thank-you text to, a husband to hug, and a contractor to pretend I never texted at all.

– E