I have a problem with maintenance. I\u2019m working on it. I told this to my therapist last week and she nodded sagely. She often nods sagely and I love that about her. She is proof that I\u2019m working on my problem with maintenance. I guess \u2018maintenance\u2019 isn\u2019t quite the right term. Or maybe it\u2019s that not doing maintenance is the manifestation of my real fear which is a fear of *knowing*. If you don\u2019t check under the hood, if you don\u2019t get the test, if you don\u2019t look too carefully, if you don\u2019t ask the right question\u2026then you don\u2019t really have to know. At least for a while. Until it blows up in your face. Which it inevitably does. You know those moments you have before you learn something that shatters you? I think about those moments in my life. They were mundane. They wouldn\u2019t have been memorable except for what came afterwards. In 1988, in my friend\u2019s car after a night of playing Nintendo and swimming in her sister\u2019s pool. Pulling up to my house and laughing our goodbyes before realizing there was an ambulance in my driveway. In 1999, a phone conversation with my beloved grandfather that ended with a promise to see me soon and an \u201cI love you, stop worrying about me.\u201d In 2000, watching my husband walk out the door with a basketball and an \u201cEat dinner without me, I\u2019ll be home in a couple of hours.\u201d Again in 2000, a fucking devastating year I still haven\u2019t recovered from, at a Halloween party where a man I\u2019d briefly dated was being friendly to me instead of the usual hostility he\u2019d shown since I\u2019d told him I didn\u2019t want to date him, and I was stupidly relieved and happy to accept the drink he handed me. I didn\u2019t think I\u2019d ever be so blissfully ignorant again. My problems with maintenance were intensified after that. I couldn\u2019t relax, I always felt unsafe and unmoored. If I heard a rattle in the car, I turned up the radio. If there was a problem in my apartment, I moved. I had eight addresses in four years. I became petrified of going to the doctor or dentist, because what if there was a problem I couldn\u2019t handle? When all the worst things keep happening, how can you trust that the sky isn\u2019t about to fall on you every time you leave the house? How can you risk hearing somebody tell you that things are even worse than you feared? What if you just can\u2019t handle ANYTHING ELSE? Better to ignore any issues, because sometimes issues just go away! After four years of living by that sensible philosophy, I met someone with whom I didn\u2019t feel alone. That was new for me. I got married again and had my sons. Weirdly, that started to steady me. It doesn\u2019t work that way for everyone, I know. Kids aren\u2019t exactly a calming force, but somehow, they grounded me. I still wasn\u2019t thrilled about maintenance, but I went to the doctor. I got my car fixed. It\u2019s best have to have a working body and car with kids. It\u2019s good to take your kids to the doctor, too. So I did. I sunk into it for a while. I don\u2019t know if I ever got comfortable. And yet\u2026it hit me like a goddamn truck when the blissful ignorance of my marriage was shattered in an artfully decorated hotel room in Manhattan with a view of big wet snowflakes in the air and ballet dancers practicing in the building across from us. I left the room an hour later to walk alone in that beautiful city in the falling snow, knowing that the life I had before was over forever and I would have to do something and tell someone and ask someone to help me, but all I could do was walk for a while and feel the snow and remember that I was still breathing and my heart was still beating. It\u2019s important to know those things. Sometimes you don\u2019t need to know anything else. So. That was almost three years ago. Maintenance has been difficult for me again in those years. I haven\u2019t been to the dentist in forever, I ignore my doctor at all costs, I have a plumbing problem in my shower and a toilet that needs you to lift the lid in order to stop it from running. Also my car is ten years old and has a lot of hazard lights that are always illuminated on the dash. I ignored grindy brake sounds until I needed to get a complete new set of brakes. A ridiculously expensive consequence, yet it still didn\u2019t cure me of the maintenance problem. But this year is the year. I told my therapist (and therapy is totally maintenance, so I\u2019m not a total failure in this regard) and now I\u2019m telling you. My 2018 resolution is to get check-ups and get things fixed. To ask the questions and find out what I need to know to solve the problems. To know that I am strong enough to handle the answers and resourceful enough to find the solutions. I\u2019ve got this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have a problem with maintenance. I\u2019m working on it. I told this to my therapist last week and she nodded sagely. She often nods sagely and I love that about her. She is proof that I\u2019m working on my problem with maintenance. I guess \u2018maintenance\u2019 isn\u2019t quite the right term. Or maybe it\u2019s that … <\/p>\n