The psychological cost

Our housing situation is really starting to get stressful. We moved here over a year ago, and we are not settled yet. In fact, if anything, it seems like we are going from bad to worse. Our stuff is boxed and scattered everywhere. We have stuff in our rental in Placitas, in the garage in John’s house in Placitas, in my rental in Santa Fe, in a storage unit in Bernalillo, and now I have a new storage unit in Santa Fe. I don’t know where anything is. We are paying rent on 2 houses and 2 storage units, an amount which exceeds the enormous mortgage we used to have on our fancy house in California. And we’re trying to buy a townhouse in Santa Fe and that’s not going well.

On a box I was packing this morning I started to write, “dishes –  Santa Fe townhome.” But we don’t know yet whether we’re going to get that townhome, so I crossed out the beginning of “townhome” and wrote “casita” instead, but then I realized there wasn’t room in the casita, so I crossed that out and wrote, “storage.” And then I was just sad.

Last night John dreamed that all our furniture was piled in the driveway and overflowing into the street, forcing the passing cars to weave around it. And it was starting to rain and he didn’t know which furniture to try to save or where to put it. And the black couch was missing (John – hello! We gave the black couch to Darren! Because the dogs ruined the black loveseat and I didn’t want them to ruin the couch too!) It’s weird when dreams get too realistic.

And then I dreamed last night that we were moving into a new rental that was full of projecting nails, and floors that wouldn’t hold your weight, and water under the floors, and exterior walls that were missing.

And then in another dream last night (it was truly a hard night), I dreamed that I was trying to box up my stuff, but the boxes were in shreds because we had used them so many times. John went to get me new boxes, but on the way out of the driveway he backed into something, and I laughed at him. He got frustrated and to prove that he really can back a vehicle like a pro, he decided to back all the way out the driveway instead of turning around (and in my dream the driveway was steep uphill gravel). So as he spun out while backing up the driveway and he backed into the neighbor’s house. Then he got so mad that he just floored it, and deliberately backed all the way through the neighbor’s wall and completely into their house! (Remember this was just a dream). We had a good laugh about that one this morning. But that’s the stress of it.

I think the fires in California are making it harder. Logically, I should be grateful that it’s not us. Our house hasn’t burnt down, and we still have all our stuff – it’s just boxed and temporarily lost and very disorganized. We haven’t suffered the losses that those people have, and our situation is temporary and will eventually sort out just fine. But I don’t think that trying to be grateful that we aren’t impacted by those fires is actually very psychologically soothing. Because in reality, we have friends, family, coworkers and clients who are being impacted. And the photos of the burned houses, and the stories from our friends and family are not helping us psychologically through our own little housing transition issue. Their reality, combined with our own lack of current housing stability, is subconsciously stressful.

Also because we’re splitting our stuff between two houses, in essentially a “his vs. hers” configuration, this is triggering traumatic memories of my past divorces. Luckily, I think our relationship is better than it’s ever been. John has been GREAT with all of this, and I am enormously grateful for that. I think we are actually kind of enjoying our weekdays apart, even though we may not quite want to admit that 🙂