Why I cried about my pool today

This morning a city official came to my door to tell me that my neighbours filed a complaint against me about the stagnant water in my pool, which is starting to stink up the neighbourhood. This is a problem that I've been aware of for some time, obviously. I also have a nose and I can smell it. And it's something that has been weighing on me quite a bit, a problem that I knew I would have to deal with eventually but that I kept ignoring, hoping that it would just magically go away, as I often do.

But as it turns out, yesterday, I decided to do something about it. I started assembling all the pipes and instruments and machines needed to start the pool's filtration system so I could do a shock treatment of the water before draining it, because I don't want to just dump all this foul-smelling water onto the street and have it be this disgusting display of filth in front of all my neighbours.

Unfortunately, as I was assembling the different parts and assessing the damage from the past two winters and reconnecting the electricity and everything, I wasn't able to get it to work properly. So I gave up for the day, left it there, and figured that I would deal with it over the next few days as I try to determine why the pump isn't pumping properly or whatever. In other words, I had taken steps to deal with the problem, but I hadn't solved it yet. And that's when the officials knocked on my door to tell me there was a complaint. For all I know, that complaint might have been filed a week ago - I don't know how long it takes them to respond - or maybe they just filed it yesterday as I was doing the work.

I was embarrassed to receive that complaint and to have to explain to this city official, who was very nice, very polite, very understanding, very gentle, but nevertheless I had to come up with a reason why I let the situation get to this point. I explained that I had tried to do it but that I was having problems with the pump. They said they would come back and check in a couple of weeks. Not a big deal.

But afterward I was thinking, why didn't my neighbour just come talk to me? Why didn't they just knock on my door and say, "Hey, we noticed that your pool water smells. It's really close to our property and it's unpleasant. Could you maybe do something about it?" And I would have said, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry." It would have been embarrassing, but it would have been less embarrassing than having the city come to slap my wrist. And I think it would have been a more neighbourly thing to do.

And I thought, you know what? I should go talk to my neighbours. I should do the thing that I wish they had done for me and just apologize to them and say: "Hey, I know that my pool is stinky and it's close to your property and it's probably unpleasant for you. I'm really sorry. I've been dealing with a lot. I'm trying to take care of it. I promise I'm gonna deal with it. And in the future, if anything like that ever happens again, or anything else that you want to address about my property, feel free to come talk to me. I'll be happy to deal with it."

But as I was thinking about having that very normal, very reasonable conversation with my neighbours, which I'm sure they would understand, I'm sure they wouldn't get mad-- or maybe they would think I'm a fucking idiot, but at least they would pretend! I was thinking about all that and I was starting to cry. I was getting so emotional that I was imagining breaking down into tears in front of my neighbours, and I didn't want that to happen, so I didn't do anything about it.

All of this happened shortly before my scheduled appointment with my therapist. So I was spinning with all these emotions in my head and thinking about why this was such a difficult situation for me to address. I discussed it with my therapist, but to be honest it was not a good session. I was feeling really anxious by then, and when I'm anxious during therapy, the pressure to go on talking and naming feelings and digging deeper makes me more anxious and I get worse over the course of the session. It was awful. I ended up cutting the session short and then crying in my basement before going out to run some errands.

Why was this such a big deal for me? There's a lot of things going on here.

I've been entertaining this fantasy of suburban life and of being a responsible adult, an autonomous person, someone who is able to take care of himself and has his shit together and is finally taking steps toward having a normal life. And buying this house was a big symbol of all that, after years of working in a professional job that I hated and that was torturing me, while also giving me a lot of money and that (very questionable) upward mobility and this sense of advancing in life into a more comfortable position, and all that crap.

So I bought the house. And of course owning property is a lot of work for a person to do alone (or mostly alone). There's all kinds of administrative things about having a mortgage, and renegotiating it, and dealing with taxes, and filing permits, and following bylaws, and mowing the lawn and trimming the hedges and cleaning the gutters and making sure that your property is in good shape, addressing problems with the foundation and the roof and the deck that is slowly rotting away and the driveway that needs to be paved and the concrete walkway that needs to be redone and the mould situation in the basement because it's too humid, etc. Not to mention that fucking pool.

All of this is stuff that has to be taken care of for myself, because it's my property, my investment, and if I don't maintain it and take care of it, it's gonna degrade over time and cause bigger problems down the line, which is a pattern with me. But on top of that, it also affects the neighbourhood. For example, the hedges on the side of my property need to be trimmed or they start to take over the community mailboxes that are there. So Canada Post is gonna send me a notice at some point and say: "Hey, you have to trim your fucking hedges because all these branches and insects and whatever are endangering the unionized mail delivery person, and if you don't deal with it immediately, we'll stop delivering the mail." And that's not just the mail for my house, but for the entire fucking block. So all my neighbours depend on me trimming my hedges properly so that Canada Post doesn't stop delivering their mail. I had to deal with that a couple of summers ago when I suddenly got this notice, and I don't know how to trim hedges. It turns out the people who trim hedges professionally are booked six months in advance and I had to book an emergency service for them to do it for me. These are things that I guess you find out and learn to deal with as a responsible adult homeowner in the suburbs.

All that to say I've been holding onto this fantasy and trying to pretend that I'm up to this task. I am capable of doing this. This is what I wanted. I bought this house impulsively, on a whim, during a pandemic, because I wanted to get away from the city and I wanted to have my own little sanctuary where I would be left alone and be able to do my work and engage in whatever little hobbies and fun things I want to do, and where my partner and I could have a life together and be happy and in love and live this fantasy of a suburban, heteronormative lifestyle.

And then I lost my job, and the past seven months have been me reeling from the realization that all of this might be taken away if I'm not able to find another job and pay the mortgage. And that looming deadline is approaching - in just 10 days now - when my income will stop and I'm gonna start to eat away at my savings until eventually I run out of money and, who knows, shit's gonna hit the fan.

So this pool situation blowing up in my face felt a bit like a crack in the facade. A bit of poking at this bubble of a dream and potentially bursting the whole thing, dispelling this mirage and exposing the truth that, no, actually, I am not an autonomous, responsible, adult member of society who is able to hold all this shit together and deal with these issues and function normally. I'm some kind of failure of a human who is too stupid or too weak or too dysfunctional to take care of all that on my own.

And this problem with the pool, while it is not that big of a deal and it is resolvable - I have the capacity to fix the pool and drain it of its foul liquid and make the problem go away - the fact that it's escalated into an official problem with the city makes me think that maybe this is the first of many blows that I'm gonna suffer in the coming weeks, as I fail to find a job and run out of money, until it gets to the point where the bank seizes my property and life turns into a complete nightmare as everything evaporates and I'm left with nothing.

Obviously, that is not true. There's a lot of false narratives in there. Just because one thing went wrong doesn't mean other things are gonna go wrong too. But what is especially not true is the big lie at the core of all this: that we're supposed to be autonomous individuals under capitalism holding all this together and able to deal with these problems on our own. And this idea that I'm not allowed to reach out to others for help, whether it's friends or family or neighbours or members of some kind of community that I should be part of, and say to these people, "Hey, I'm struggling right now. I'm having a really hard time dealing with my pool. Could you come help me?"

Why do I feel like that would be exposing some kind of weakness, some fault within me as an individual, as a man, as an adult, instead of being a normal truth, that maintaining a fucking house on a small patch of land is difficult for any person to do on their own?

If I were part of a community, it should be okay for me to reach out to my neighbours and to say, "Hey, I'm not doing well. I'm sorry about my pool. I know that it affects you. Maybe you could help me deal with it. Because we're in this together."

I wish that was the kind of community I lived in. But instead I feel alone and isolated.

And that's why this whole thing made me cry several times today.