The Deck
After I divorced my now ex-husband, my daughter and I moved in with my parents. Just for a few years was the plan. Life had other ideas, but that’s another story. We moved into the office and guest bedroom on the second floor. The office opened out onto a deck which became storage for my half of the household belongings from the divorce. We covered the glass roof to protect everything from the sun and hung blackout curtains in front of the windows that surrounded the sides of the deck. This sounds secure, but the space was not airtight — there were several small gaps between the windows and the roof as well as the corners. Well, small gaps are all it takes to let rain in. You know what else fits through small gaps? Squirrels and mice.
So, over the years, my precious belongings have gotten wet and then dried out multiple times. Many boxes have had corners nibbled on. Holes have been chewed in some of the curtains. And one time a raccoon literally gnawed through the deck wall and feasted on a box of books. Plastic containers fared no better — one box of Christmas ornaments had a huge hole in one corner with tiny little bite marks all around it. Worst of all are the rat droppings. The floor is covered in them as are the shelves of the bookcases. We have tried various repellent options over the years, but nothing has worked. I try not to go out there because it’s too depressing to think about.
Living with my parents has given me the opportunity to observe firsthand where a lot of my behavior patterns stem from. Particularly with my mother as she and I are a lot alike. I will watch her do something, get annoyed, and think, “Oh my God, I do that, too!” Honestly, I’ve had some breakthroughs that I don’t think I would have had otherwise. It’s a little tornado of insight when you get irritated, recognize that you do the same thing, and realize that you got it from your mother all at the same time.
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I have also put great effort into reparenting myself post-divorce. Reparenting is where you unlearn unhealthy behavioral patterns that you acquired in childhood. Sometimes it’s a matter of unconsciously mirroring your parents and sometimes it’s survival skills you developed to deal with your parents’ less than stellar childrearing techniques. I had already done a lot of soul searching and reached different religious conclusions than what I had been taught. (This is code for my-father-is-a-pastor-and-I-am-now-an-atheist.) But there are so many behaviors that you don’t even realize stem from your childhood — things like anxiety, people-pleasing, perfectionism, etc. Going down this path while you are living with your parents is not ideal. There is little space to have the emotions that you need to process in order to face these challenges. But it is better than not facing them.
One behavior that I am working on is feeling my feelings. I tend to want to adopt whatever change I think I need to make and not look back. I don’t want anything to do with the thing that I’ve rejected. While changing your behavior for the better is good, it is only half of the problem. You can’t truly move past something until you have dealt with the emotions. You have to delve into why you made the decision to change this particular behavior on an emotional level, not just an intellectual one. I’m so good at the intellectual part. I really struggle with the emotional part. And it literally just came to me as I’m writing that this is also a survival strategy that I learned in childhood. We were never allowed to express negative feelings. The minute I start to feel something, I cut it off and focus on what needs to be done next. (Oof. Did not expect that. I came here to share an insight not have another one.)
Anyway, back to the deck. I came across these mouse repellent pods and decided that I would clean up the rat droppings and set these out. I hated dodging the droppings or, worse, walking over them every time I needed to go out there. And they would need to be dealt with at some point. So as I’m out there vacuuming up the nasty little things, I’m having emotions about how things got to be this way. I resented that various belongings had been treated certain ways, despite my raising concerns at the time. It felt very familiar — having my concerns dismissed, and I just had to suck it up because they were taking me in after my divorce, etc. Things with my family are very much this way — loving-kindness and generosity mixed with dismissiveness and apathy.
Looking at my bookcases, I realized that they are basically ruined. I had these lovely cherrywood bookcases that are now warped from moisture with shelves gray from being covered in rodent excrement for years. There is no salvaging that. Like the trooper I am (and not wanting to feel the feelings I was having), I immediately thought, “Well, I will just consider this getting rid of my old life and when the time comes I will buy new things for my new life.” At the same time, I realized that everything on the deck will need to be dealt with. I can’t just throw everything out. Each thing will need to be looked at, assessed, and have a decision made to toss or keep. Much like what I am doing as I reparent myself. All the family muck must be waded through. You cannot just “step over it and move on,” which is what my mother likes to say. No, I need to touch each painful memory, feel it, learn from it, and then let it go. This time I cleared out a pathway and some surface areas. Next step is to open up some boxes.
Originally published at https://www.thefairersex.org on May 17, 2026.
