When I was in high school, my mom and I moved into a house, just the two of us. My older (perfect) sister was away at college and my mom and I had been living at my grandparents while we waited to get enough money to pay and for the time it took to build it. It wasn’t a mansion by any means, but it was our home.

The day of our walkthrough, one of the builders came and every time we found something that needed repair or work, he stuck and orange dot on it. By the end of the walkthrough, we had amassed a small army of orange dots all over the house and were assured they’d be fixed shortly.

We were finally able to move in a week or so later and found that all the orange dots were still there. Not one flaw had been fixed, not one dot removed, but we were so ready to be in our new home that we ignored them, assuming they’d be fixed later.

Over the course of the 5 years we lived there, the house never got fixed. The stickers gradually faded until they were so light that you had to look closely to see that they were once orange. We had to peel them all off when we sold that house a few years ago, revealing all our home’s little blemishes, shortcomings.

Sometimes when I think about that house and those dots, I feel like my life has those same orange dots all over it. Sure, I don’t need paint or spackle, I don’t need a bolt tightened or a cabinet straightened, but I have flaws. Flaws that desperately need repair.

There is an orange dot on my schoolwork, on my energy to complete it. I’m still passing everything (that I know of), but my ability to push through, to keep trying, to not give up, is wearing down. I don’t know what the fix is, I don’t know how to repair this, but I see the problem and maybe that’s the first step.

There is an orange dot on our apartment. Even while on vacation, I haven’t been able to keep the mess contained. And so much of what I can’t do, my husband is forced to. He picks up so much of my slack, does so much more than he really should have to. And even still, it’s a stye.

There is an orange dot on my relationship with my family. There are members of my family that I still cannot bring myself to speak to, ones who I actively go out of my way to avoid seeing. There are others that I haven’t found the courage to tell all my truths to, and many of those truths are ones I’ve been dying to scream out for a very long time.

There is an orange dot on my marriage. We have a good marriage, I’m not complaining. But we have problems that our peers may never encounter. Having one half of a marriage be chronically in pain, chronically ill, chronically (gulp) disabled, isn’t just hard for the one in pain. As I’ve learned from finally sitting down and listening to Slappy is that it is intensely challenging to the “normal” one too. And it’s not made easier when the normal one has 80-90 hour work weeks and himself is run ragged all the time. It’s hard to make time for each other, it’s hard to find energy. I have a million excuses, but the bottom line is that it needs work.

There’s a huge orange dot over my mind, my sanity. I bear such guilt that sometimes I think I might sink right through the ground from its tremendous weight. I bear guilt for what I’ve done to myself, to other people, to my family and friends. I bear guilt for not being able to do everything I sign up for, for not being able to be everything I want to be for other people. For not being supportive enough, for not being happy enough.

There is an orange dot on my health whose size rivals the sun. I am doing everything I can to make the repair there, I will walk to the end of the earth if it means my health gets better, if it means I get to be me again. I have never wanted anything as much as I want to be without pain. Not just for me, but for my husband, for my mom and dad, for the people who rely on me.

There is an orange dot that is starting to show in my spirit. In my belief that things will get better. Doubt has crept in, it has invaded the back corners of my mind and it’s hard to push away. I struggle to stay in the present and not think about the rest of my life and how I’ll ever manage if things stay on the course they’re on now.

The more I look around, the more I see those orange dots stuck to so much of my life. And I’m fighting as hard as I can to find them all, to figure out what needs to be fixed, before they fade.

Before they fade into the background and things stay broken for good.

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