Addictions

By

Annette Bergman

 

I’ve known for some time that I am a food addict and there were times when I sewed like I was a material addict. I think the food made me feel good…for a short period of time and the sewing was a visual thing for me.  Sometimes life doesn’t have a lot of visual accomplishments and when I would get discouraged I would sew something together to see that I had finished a project.

Some times when I was selling real estate and nothing was going together or I was becoming impatience over something.  I would start a new flowerbed, paint a room or make some new curtains or anything else that came to mind.  For some reason I have always felt driven. What for or to what I am not sure and unless someone will step forward and help me figure it out I might not ever know.

My sister asked me once why I couldn’t be happy with one career instead of going from one thing to another.  I was a beautician for over forty years and owned three different beauty shops, and then I bought a dress shop, and then a paint store. Then I started hanging wallpaper for customers or anyone else who called for my services.  Then I designed some patterns for Simplicity.

I managed an apartment complex for a while and after my Mom died I went to take care of my Dad and ended up being a bookkeeper for a larger apartment complex.

 I’ve always managed to keep moving from one house to another fixing them up and making them pretty.  If you want to count every home I have lived in there have been over thirty of them from Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Virginia, Utah, I lived in three different homes, two Quonset Huts and a Wherry Housing unit on Okinawa in eighteen months.

I have just realized that Rehab is an addition that is harder to recognize than drug or alcohol addiction.

I believe I am a Rehab Addict and my addiction has cost me dearly.  In the past year I have been involved in redoing four different homes.  Last September we moved out of our home I had set a record in: I had lived there for fourteen years.  My husband and I bought a five bedroom to rehab.  We spend our winter in Florida and I had to paint and redo that home for the three months we were there.  Then come home and finish the house we moved out of and before the five bedroom home was finished I bought another rental. 

My husband is at the end of his rope with me and he had found the best help I have ever had to finish the big house and when I bought the last rental my helper left for greener pastures. He had known me for about ten months and the writing on the wall for him must have been in large neon flashing letters.

Selling real estate for a living for thirty years and becoming a Rehab addict was harder to recognize than alcoholism.  Someone should invent a gadget that will detect the rehab addition and start a twelve step program for rehab as well.

I have a friend who sends me information on the Twelve Step program and one of his emails made me realize that I do have a problem…so I have bought my last house to rehab. 

As soon as I finish the home we live in, I will retire my paint brush, let my Broker licenses expire and quit reading real estate ads.