My house is in a state of deconstruction. Fix It Dude comes over everyday at 7 a.m. (yes, even in the -26 C weather) and wakes me up with the sound of a crowbar against aluminum siding. He rips off pieces of my abode, tossing the metal and wood in an unruly pile on my deck and replacing it with overpriced insulation.

My house was built in 1946, and if you look at the front of it at the moment, you can see all the layers of its existence, from the recently added pink Styrofoam insulation and red tape, to the tacky white and yellow aluminum siding from the 70s, to the even worse teal blue wooden siding underneath that, to the black tar paper beneath it all. It’s a mishmash of 51 years of renovations and I gotta say, it looks like hell.

(And it’s going to look like a construction zone all winter, because we can’t stucco over the hot pink insulation until spring.)

But then I remind myself that this is all necessary. Those layers need to be excavated and ripped down so that I can start fresh and have a home that I’m proud of, not just one that I’m living in. As crappy as it looks now, when we’re done, it will be worth it.

This is how my life feels right now – in absolute disarray. It’s frustrating and exhausting and it seems like there is no end to the difficulties I am facing. I can’t even imagine what my life will look like when this is all over. It’s hard to believe that it will ever be over.

But I keep chipping away at it. Taking the drugs. Going to therapy. Doing the hard work. And hoping that what works for houses works for people, too.

Originally posted at Saviabella on November 27, 2007.