The Roof is (Almost) on Fire!

Sun Porch - Demo Phase

The trouble with both people and old houses is that when they’re under renovation, it’s damn near impossible to make any sense of how they got to their present state.  There’s never any single cause-and-effect plotline to follow.  Instead, you try to trace back bits and pieces, looking for signs to help you understand.  You uncover all sorts of surprises - things you wish you could ignore or even unsee.  You curse past decisions, whether you made them or someone else did.  And you become completely overwhelmed trying to decide what to tackle first. 

I used to be the poster child for grit.  Until I wasn’t.  Until one night I was sprawled out on the kitchen floor I hadn’t mopped in weeks, sobbing, drunk, and trying to figure out which bits were cookie crumb topping I’d spilled from a pint of ice cream versus remains of asphalt I’d tracked into the house from working on my roof.  As if eating either option off the floor was a good idea.

This was what the start of perimenopause looked like for me.  Though it took me over two years, eight different doctors, and several failed attempts at medications to figure it out.

To make a long story short, symptoms began during a period in which I was overworked and simultaneously discovered that the house I’d just bought was a money pit.  I was averaging 80 hours of work each week while also battling wildlife in my bedroom ceiling and dealing with frequent breakdowns of appliances or plumbing. 

But I had handled similar levels of challenges in the past – what was so different this time?  Why was I now crying in my car in the parking lot every day before going to work?  My brain had always worked like a spreadsheet before – why couldn’t I seem to plan my way out of all the messes as I’d done in the past?  I had been practicing meditation for years – so why was it no longer effective at helping me stay mindful and choose calm in the face of stress? 

My mind was a constant jumble.  

I felt totally disconnected from myself, like I didn’t even know who I was.  I had such unpredictable mood swings that I was afraid to find out what version of me would pop out at any given moment.  My insomnia worsened, as did the night sweats I’d been experiencing for years.  Anxiety wasn’t even the correct word to describe all the panic and agitation I felt – I should know, I’d lived with generalized anxiety disorder my whole life.   While I did suffer some hot flashes, those were the least debilitating of all my symptoms.  Which is probably why it took me so long to suspect perimenopause.

For a long time, I thought if only I could get back to healthy habits – proper diet, regular exercise, more meditation, self-care that didn’t involve fast food or alcohol (because those aren’t really self-care items, are they…) – I would get better.  But nothing worked.  So I tried to do MORE to fix it.  I bought a grounding pad.  Went to yoga more regularly.  Relaxed in the pool/sauna/steam room at the Y.  Bought an online course on somatic yoga practices.  Went to a therapist for CBT-i to address my insomnia.  Went to the doctor and tried several meds, all of which either did nothing or caused terrible side effects (SSRIs are NOT compatible with my body/brain…).

Things just got worse.  The more I tried to “fix” my situation, the more I blamed myself when things weren’t improving.  I had a few weeks here and there where things seemed great totally out of the blue, where I felt more like myself again.  I took advantage of those times to push myself back into helpful routines of jogging, eating right, etc.  But it never lasted.  And the shame and guilt and self-blame were always there to narrate an explanation. 

In the meantime, the roof over the back half of my house (an addition which was poorly built, little did I know…) told a similar story of destruction.  It began with a nest of wasps living in the ceiling near the chimney, then a squirrel inhabiting the entire space above the drop ceiling.  I went up on the roof and saw that the membrane had been pieced together and improperly sealed with interior caulk; I could tell from the squishy feeling as I walked around that it had been leaking for years; cutting back a section of the membrane confirmed my suspicion that the asphalt sheathing insulation was soaked and rotted through. 

As lost as I was in all my own health problems, I simply could not handle the roof.  So, I put my fingers in my ears and screamed “LA LA LA LA LA!” and hoped it would hold out until things got better.

But just a little over a year after moving in, the roof began leaking right over my bed.  I tore off the nasty drop ceiling tiles and tried to stop the leak with ALL the products you can buy at Menards, but just like with my own health, temporary fixes were just that – not designed to hold up for the deluge.

At some point you just have to tear things down to the studs and sort out all the messes at once. 

You have to rebuild a solid structure and then tackle the rest of the problems one by one.

For my house, this meant tearing three rooms almost entirely down to studs.  I spent an entire week tearing off the membrane and plywood sheathing, the latter of which had to be cut into squares and pried up, then tossed into the yard and hauled to the dumpster out front.  Then it took me three weeks to replace the joists, slope the tops to create a rake, install OSB, tar it, and install two layers of roofing material as well as all flashing, drip edges, fascia, etc.  In one month, I rebuilt the entire roof structure, hiring my former college students and enlisting the help of friends whenever possible. I'll post a reel of photos soon!

For my health, tearing down to studs meant QUITTING MY BELOVED JOB AS A TENURED ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR so I could devote as much time as possible to sorting out what the BAKAWK was going on.  As much as I would miss teaching, my students, my colleagues, and the creative collaboration, I knew I had to do it.  I could not continue the way I was.

This also meant changing health insurance.  Do not even get me started on this topic right now.  But once I finally ended up on Medicaid, I was able to get into a therapist immediately (before I had been on a 7-month waitlist…) and see her weekly (rather than every 1-3 months, as with integrative behavioral health, for example). 

After months of weekly therapy and a HUGE wake-up call involving a certain person in my life, I was diagnosed with Complex PTSD, due to years of (what I perceived to be) gaslighting, invalidation, manipulation, and control in what I believe was an emotionally abusive relationship.  This led me to try EMDR, which I cannot promote highly enough.  EMDR reset my nervous system so miraculously that I finally feel capable of circling back to all the cognitive work I can do to better cope with anxiety and triggers.

But I wouldn’t have even made it that far or started to make progress in therapy had it not been for first working with an OB belonging to the Menopause Society to balance my hormones.  I saw her just before Thanksgiving.  She prescribed a hormonal birth control, explaining that it would level out the hormones and prevent massive fluctuations from wreaking havoc on my entire being.  By the first week of December, I felt like I was back in my own head.  It was like the years of chaotic, stormy seas suddenly calmed. I called her a witch, and she said, “Thank you.”

The hormone stabilization also made it possible for me to wake up one day and say goodbye to alcohol forever.  While it had always been an unhealthy coping mechanism in my life, it had developed into a true mental addiction in which numbing myself at the end of each day was my last-ditch effort to simply continue existing.

But I’m one of the lucky ones.  I fixed my roof while getting the medical help I needed.  Both stories are getting back on track, and neither one is finished.  I’ll never fully be able to answer all my questions or understand how things came to be the way they were.  The mysteries will continue - for example:

Who would ever think it was okay to span a twenty-foot distance with only 2x12s sloped down to 6” at the far end? 

Was the insane brain fog and an inability to make decisions caused by perimenopause, C-PTSD, or burnout?  Did one of these cause the other?  Will my brain functions ever return?  Oh god, what if it’s Dementia, like my mom had?!?!?!

How did the roof never collapse when one-third of the east side was supported by a floating 2x10, supported only with a few nails holding it onto the original part of the house?

What are these new headaches?  Migraines?  We have to try a different form of hormones now?  BAKAWK.  Ok. 

Who in the BAKAWK built a flat roof in Wisconsin, anyway?!?!?

I had to tear up my life completely and throw much of it in the dumpster in order to gain insight into causes and do my best to rebuild.  I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to say that this renovation is “complete”, but at least I know that when the next storm comes, my roof and I both will be strong enough to make it through.