The Importance of DIY

I recently wrote a blog about how I had never decorated my home because I had been afraid that I would have a man I wanted to be with came over, he would think my decor was so eccentric or eclectic that he'd run screaming from the place and thus I would be alone forever. Here's another thing that made me change my mind about that...

I recently spent a good deal of time in the home of a man whose ex-wife spent the last years of their marriage covering every available wall of their house with the most hideous atrocities against pleasant home design I have ever seen. She even went so far as to paint their bedroom (a place that should have been filled with passion, romance or at the very least relaxation) a color best described as Rancid Baby Caca. If that wasn't a passive hint that there was trouble in paradise, I don't know what would have been.

By doing things like insisting that he never wear red (pouting angrily when he did, insisting he had done so as a deliberate affront to her), driving away any friend that empowered him or disagreed with her, spoon feeding him his life and domineering the rest, she had basically decorated the man much the same way as she had their home. I don't know what bothers me more; that she was self-absorbed and grotesque enough to insist up on that being the case, or that he had let her do it. Whatever the case, both he and the house were tailored specifically to her eerily selfish taste, both were as far from seeming like a cohesive whole as one could imagine, both were teeming with potential and equally as completely unable to attempt change without someone else coming in to do the hard work. I can't even describe how frustrating that was to me.

Still, if I had gotten married when I wanted to, which was right out of high school, or even say... ten years ago, I would have innitially suffered the same fate. Maybe not entirely, but I would have stuck myself in a situation where my significant other may have gotten quite used to my bending to their every whim, tailoring myself to them like a living suit of support and love and service. I was well on my way with the man I was supposed to have been married to by now. Without my determination to grow and get better and change, I might well be splotched with emotional paint effects that made no sense, and caused people to gasp and recoil at the lost potential. I wouldn't relive a lot of what got me to this place, but I had to experience it all to get where I am and there is a depth of value to that I cannot fathom.

So don't doubt that The Universe sends us messages all the time. As with the three ghosts in Dickens's A Christmas Carol, I have been shown visions of my past, my present and my would be future. I too have woken from my slumber shouting, "There's still time! I can make it right!" One thing is for certain... anyone who comes at me with their can of Rancid Baby Caca paint, is in for a big suprise.