Flood

Last week, I encountered a small flood in my bedroom. 

It had started as a puddle that I'd noticed out of the corner of my eye over the previous frantic week, but every time I'd caught a glimpse, I'd hurried away and hoped that it would disappear on its own. 

Reader, mysterious puddles in bedrooms do not disappear - they turn into floods. 

It turns out that my hot water cylinder had been leaking slowly from the bottom, and because I hadn't tended to it in time, the steady drip had increased to the point where it could cover a large chunk of my bedroom in water. 

On Tuesday night, two of my neighbours and my landlords were in my house, crouched down by the cylinder and rapidly emptying takeaway containers full of water into my recycling bin, which had been repurposed as a bucket. The valve that was supposed to come to the rescue and turn off my water supply was no longer working, and was instead having the opposite effect of causing even more water to come out of the cylinder. 

Three hours, several buckets of dirty water, a heap of wet rags and half-a-dozen frustrating phone calls to plumbers later, we had the situation under enough control for all of us to be able to go to bed. 

The next morning, I awoke to the same level of water on the floor. The steady drip had refused to be contained by the assortment of sophisticated water collection devices we had placed under it (ice cream container, baking tray) and had once again escaped to cover three of the four corners of my bedroom. 

I emptied up what little water I could, sent a quick text to my landlords explaining the situation, and headed out to work, hoping for the best. The best was what I got: I came home to find the situation remedied. The plumber, electrician and carpenter had all been in to play their part in diagnosing the problem, and had installed a new hot water cylinder as the solution. My landlords came over to confirm that all was okay and that, seemingly, was the end of that.

*****

It's been a week now, but I still find myself mulling over the Mini Flood of 2023. All things considered, the situation was resolved quickly and with minimal disruption. Yes, it ate up my Tuesday night, but I had plenty of support and most of the cleanup on the next day occurred without me. My landlords were quick and efficient in getting the issue sorted, resulting in barely two days without hot water. 

And yet, I can't help but feel like this is another iteration of a lesson I have been failing to learn over and over recently, like a ditzier-than-most goldfish: don't wait until it becomes a flood. I had noticed the puddle. Yes, I was busy, but not so busy as to fail to notice an indoor puddle. But I had told myself that I didn't have time to deal with it just then, and that there were far more important things that I was doing with my time. Cue the flood. 

I could have saved myself a lot of wet-rag-wringing and frantic phone calling had I dealt with the problem sooner. I could have cleaned up the puddle, taken a couple of minutes to look closely at my hot water cylinder, and let my landlords know that there was a problem so that they could call a (non-emergency) plumber to come and take a look at it during daylight hours. Instead, convinced that my work trumped everything else, I barely gave the puddle a nervous glance as I returned to my laptop. 

I am a whole person is something I have been repeating over and over recently, trying to convince myself that it is true. But for all my muttering of this statement under my breath, I have yet to translate it into a sustained caring for my whole-people needs beyond work. Whole people have plumbing problems. Whole people need home-cooked meals. Whole people require exercise. All of these needs have remained untended to while I've attempted to tackle everything on my work to-do list, a futile endeavour if there ever were one. 

I have ignored the pleas of my family and friends, telling myself that they don't really understand what it's like and I'm the only one who knows what's best. I feel slapped by the arrogance of this statement as I type it. I don't want to be this person. I want to take on board wise counsel and maintain healthy boundaries. I want to cook actual meals and share them with friends - on weeknights. I want to go for a run as a way to relieve the stress of the day, and remember what it felt like to have my body feel fit and strong. I want to deal with puddles before they turn into floods. 

I know that things won't change overnight. It's only Day Two of the school holidays and I've already had to stop myself from checking email or writing down one more thing on my to-do list. Whole people don't evolve quickly from their half-person state. But with time, accountability and a lot of grace, I'm convinced that a whole person will emerge yet to write to you each morning. Watch this space.