A Resilient Warning: Listening to Intuition

For many, home renovation is a mundane dream. Yet I’ve heard it said that home renovation drives people into mortgage crises and marital breakdowns. Yet, like divorce, everyone does it.

Since I can remember, I have chosen the channels on my own television and watched HGTV home renovation shows. For me, I hope it is mundane. Completely straightforward and without a surprise for the budget, but that would be a rare story. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.

Lately, I’ve had a line from a song stuck in my head. It’s not a song that’s on any of my playlists, nor was it on the radio somewhere. I can’t even remember the last time I heard it, yet, there’s the line, “she’s a girl with a problem and there ain’t no cure.”

As someone who watches what I think, say, or sing because I believe words and thoughts are the genesis of reality, I can’t let this line go unchecked. Indeed, it’s a clear warning that I must have a problem for which there is no cure.

I can’t accept my unconscious mind’s judgment and sentence, because I am well aware that my unconscious is lazy and efficient. Humpf. We’ll see about that.

The Ambiguity Problem

I don’t surrender acceptance to a problem easily, certainly not passively.

Listening to intuition, I might be a girl with a problem, but I am a world-class problem solver. I know because I have the certificates, credentials, and track record.

The first step is that you have to define the problem. Name it clearly and specifically. If you get it right, the solution is obvious.

Usually, people get it wrong, act anyway, and end up with three problems instead of one. Then they tackle those three problems, and in the same impatient and imprecise manner, amplify those three into nine, and on we go until the world breaks.

Why three? The original problem, the wrong action, and the equal and opposite of the wrong action. It’s simply physics.

The best thing to do, if you can, is to sit on your hands. If it doesn’t take care of itself, it will certainly show itself.

In my case, the problem that brought me down was corporate culture. I saw people lie about their accomplishments and get praised and promoted. Other people were quietly doing a great job and acknowledging where they could have done better. Those people didn’t get raises.

Corporate life seemed like a game people were playing, and I didn’t like the rules. It turned out that the rewards weren’t something I was keen on either. Despite move after move, the same game was being played out no matter where I went.

Looking back, I realized the game was the fairest when I started in manufacturing, and everything was tangible, permanent, and repeatable, whereas in service, it’s the complete opposite – fleeting, unique, and indefinite. This flip from products into ambiguity results in a completely different culture. The more challenging the work was to measure, the more brutal the game.

The Protection of Home

This time, listening to intuition, I’m too aware of my problem. It’s smacking me in the face in this very moment.

A breeze is caressing my cheek. A frigid, wet breeze. The wind is blowing through the wall.

In December, the thermometer on my office wall read 13 degrees Celsius. I am sitting on a heated cushion gifted to me for use in my ground blind during December hunting, wrapped in a blanket gifted to me by my boyfriend’s mother, who cackled and said, “Because it’s so cold in that house.”

This is torment, especially for someone like me.

I am a homebody. It might be because I fall under the zodiac sign of Cancer, and they say we are all about our shells. It might be because I am an introvert who is perfectly fine spending the day with a book, reading about adventure rather than going out to find it.

My homebody nature might be because I am a scared little girl who cut her hand wide open when she went out exploring, and that three-year-old learned a thing or two about danger, and the problematic situation of needing a stranger to help. But you aren’t supposed to talk to strangers!

That three-year-old also had a rough time as a result of a house fire. No one was home at the time, but my blankie barely survived. I was one of those Linus-type kids who preferred the constant company of a little pale yellow lightweight blanket with a ribbon trim, and instead of sucking my thumb, I sucked the ribbon. Post-fire, in a strange hotel room, I bawled my eyes out until someone went and got it.

A Blanket of Security

Apparently, it was so laden with smoke and fumes that my mother hand-washed it many times before allowing me to hold a plastic bag with only one corner protruding.

I was told I couldn’t put it in my mouth. I doubt I followed such commands. My older sister protested violently, claiming she couldn’t stand the smell of it and that she wouldn’t sleep in the same bed with me if I was going to hold it.

After the fire, we were told we could paint our rooms any color we wanted. I said “Black.” I imagined a cozy cave, and the thought warmed my heart.

My mother scoffed. “It’s already black!” She chose alphabet wallpaper instead. So much for any color I wanted.

How that would have worked anyway is beyond my comprehension or imagination. No one had their own room, save for my parents. My mom had her room, my dad had his, but I shared with my older sister, and my two younger siblings had the last room.

Listening to intuition, my older sister wanted the wallpaper. She always got what she wanted, plus she ended up majoring in English; language was her thing. Later in life, she declared that she couldn’t sleep in the same room as me because I don’t close my eyes when I sleep, and it freaks her out.

Just like that, she got her own room, and my brother got his own, because duh, he’s the only boy, so my remaining sister and I had to share.

Once, while cleaning her room, my mother discovered old sandwiches under the bed, and the sunflower seeds in the bread had sprouted and were growing in the carpet.

Whatever the plan was when the house was purchased, there weren’t enough bedrooms.

The solution was to kick me into the basement. Literally and figuratively, my mother kicked my bony ass, and I flew down the stairs and landed on the cold concrete floor. I marveled that I’d done so intact. Not one broken bone! I was so proud of myself. It’s good that I had that talent, because I relied on it many times.

Back then, I thought I was a terrible little girl who deserved such treatment. Today, listening to intuition, I realize that my mother was living a life she couldn’t stand and taking it out on the smallest things around her. She was violent, and I was a flyweight. In fact, I think that’s why she hated me. I was skin and bones, and everyone else in my house was always on a diet.

I remember the day I accused her of beating me. She screamed denials, then called all my siblings. “She says I beat her, is that true?”

Every one of them said, “I don’t know if you beat her, but you certainly beat me.”

Every single one. I remember her breaking a wooden spoon on my brother. I remember seeing a black eye on my younger sister. The night I finally escaped from her house, it was because she had taken her temper out on my older sister, and my older sister called my dad, who came running. Funny, I thought, she finally picked on the wrong kid.

She never apologized, and today if she wanted to, there’s no way she could – she’s out of time.

Dr. Joe Dispenza says that recalling the memory without the emotion is wisdom. I used to be tempted by suicide, but as my brother said, I should have tried harder, because I failed at it.

Safe and Sound

Thankfully, my brother’s words made me explode into anger, and any thought that I deserved such treatment evaporated into “How dare you?”

It took many years to chip away at that rage until it finally dissolved into wisdom. The wisdom of choosing who you invite into your life and how you live it.

Or more pointedly, the wisdom of walking away from certain people and situations, even when they say, “But it’s your mother!” Yeah, it’s my mother.

I’m glad your experience of “mother” has led you to feel shock at the thought, but that wasn’t my experience. If only I had not succumbed to the guilt and plausibility of people changing, I would have stayed away, instead of doing the to-and-fro dance that victims of abuse are known to perform.

Listening to intuition told me that all I ever wanted was to feel safe and sound. Capital Cities Safe and Sound, “I could lift you up, I could show you what you wanna see and take you where you wanna be,” as their song starts.

I want a bedroom without sandwiches growing under the bed and a solid door that closes out the violence. I don’t need the cover of a magazine, just clean, cozy, and functional, or the ability to get there with sweat and time.

If that’s my problem today, and that was my problem always, according to the Northern Pike’s song in my head, why is it that there is no cure? Isn’t it simply a matter of time and money?

When I bought my first house, my dad told me, “Now you never have to worry about your time and money again – you know where it’s all going.” Fine by me, I thought. I poured both into that house and walked away richer for it, both financially and in ways that can’t be measured.

Legal Realities

I moved in here, into my boyfriend’s house, thinking that’s what we’d do – pour time and money into fixing up his house. Newly retired, I had the time. Newly rich from the sale of my second house, I had the money. I thought my biggest problem would be agreeing on the wall color.

Yet again, I moved with no idea. I moved into my first house with no idea of the backyard’s state, no idea there was no winter water (like, what, that even exists?), and no idea the squirrel I saw disappear into the attic was doing its own version of a massive surprise.

I moved in here knowing that my boyfriend’s mother was an intrusive presence, and I insisted he talk to her about boundaries first. He said he did, which only made her unchanged behavior even more maddening.

The situation escalated until I told her in no uncertain terms that she was uninvited. Cold distance between us now, the problem is solved. Stay on your property, and I’ll stay over here. Fences make great neighbors; I’d be happy to erect one should you forget where the property line is.

My boyfriend once said, “No one loves you like your mother.” I had to tell him, that’s not love, that’s control.

Slowly, listening to intuition, I learned that my very adult boyfriend looks like he owns his own house and runs his own business, but in reality, he still lives with his parents. One takes care of his business, and the other, his house.

His house, did I say? Well, that’s what I thought, but again, I had no idea. In fact, the house is on the same legal property as the business, and the business is partially owned by his dad.

Women and Money

I have the time and the money to make this house into a home. However, if I invest both, I lose both. I have no stake in the business, and like my ex-colleague, who rents a home with dreams of buying it one day, will find out that the renovations they spent their money on and the gardens they spent their time on are not investments but losses. I know their landlord, and listening to intuition, I think that he’s never going to sell, but he is noticing how his property is appreciating under their watch.

Soon after graduation, I saw an advertisement for a weekend course titled “Women and Money.” I signed up and was surprised to find I was about twenty years younger than anyone there. I learned how women lose their inheritances to their spouses by making uninformed decisions with their payouts, among a thousand other things that made me richer and kept me that way. Best Saturday ever.

A lack of ownership is a clear part of this girl’s problem, but it doesn’t stop there. Listening to intuition, it’s my guess that the boyfriend worries about the women in his life knowing too many details about it, for the chance they might use all that knowledge against him in a divorce. But that’s what he witnessed, and like me, he swapped experience for wisdom.

Even as a silent, stay-at-home-and-out-of-the-details kind of business partner, there is the issue of the renovation. In a small town with lifelong friendships, certain expectations hold. Your friends expect you to hire them, buy your supplies from them, and yet the last few times that happened, we all found out that friends will show up to work intoxicated, proceed to do a bad job, and then expect full payment.

The only cure would be to win an all-expense-paid total home and property renovation. The kind of package that, like the Princess Home lottery, includes custom-designed architecture, full interior decorating, and complete landscaping, including waterfront buildings and structures, with the promise of never lifting a finger, spending one net new dollar, or feeling pressured into certain choices. Only then would my problem be as simple as choosing the color of the walls.

The Northern Pikes go on to sing, “You see, love can conquer all and, man, I wish it were true. She’s a girl with a problem, and there’s nothing I can do. You can bang your head against a brick wall, you can lock her Humpty dumpty but you can’t prevent her fall. Well, bang, bang, bang, and there’s nobody home. She’s a girl with a problem, and she wants to be alone. You can lie to me. You can lie to yourself for a while, Till those lies turn into something else.”

Lies turn into prisons, being alone turns into solitary confinement, and the point of that punishment is to force you to forget how to communicate.

I learned to talk when I was three. The word ‘no’ was my first word, and in a world where everyone gives you everything you want, you never need to use it, you never even realize there’s a need for such a word. Maybe I never learned how to communicate, but I did learn to listen, how to tune in and hear my soul cry out in pain.

There’s no cure here. The third time is the charm, apparently, so listening to intuition, I will wait and see how this tidal wave of mystery settles down to calm, clear water, lest I get swept up in it.