Thank you all for the beautiful encouraging posts.
So I was standing outside surveying all this stuff, wondering how my mom might like it arranged. Where does she want her stuff?
So I finally caved and called her up and told her what I was doing.
She wasn't very excited. I asked her what her ideal 69th birthday present would be - how her ideal garage would be arranged. She said, "Like I had it." (Before I moved in here.)
She had just recently bought a brand new storage building, as we were anticipating the arrival of another family member's belongings last week. But that fell through. But this is a nice, new storage building and all my stuff is dirty so she really doesn't want it in there. I mean, it was expensive so we'd like to keep it as clean as possible.
She has an attic that she's been unable to get to ever since I got here because she can't pull the folding stairs down from the ceiling. And I have some lightweight, brand new bookshelves in boxes I'd been storing under there and I said, hey I could put those in the new storage building temporarily.
And she goes, "Oh it won't be temporary."
And I said, "What do you mean? Have you lost faith in me?"
And she said, "Oh I'm sure it won't get done."
And I said, "You've lost faith in me?"
And she said, yes. Somewhere along the way she lost faith in me.
Now I just want to give up. She has no faith in me, so why even bother?
After I told her that her surprise was my cleaning out the garage, her voice changed. She wasn't excited or happy about it at all.
I can't believe she has no faith in me. That really stung. It really hurts.
I guess I will just go give her her birthday card and come back home. Gosh, it really hurts.
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
They're just words. And it's just stuff.
None of it should have that big of an impact on me.