Painting anxiety

Some types of stress I can see coming from a mile away, like the cortisol spikes that inevitably accompany long distance travel, moving to a new country, and starting yet another new job. It sucks, but at least it’s predictable, so it can be managed to the extent that it doesn’t completely ruin my mood, my sleep, or my ability to say things in a nice way.

Moving stress is so common in our foreign service family that we instinctively know to be more gentle with each other than usual. This move to The Gambia especially, with the kids being 8 and 11 and acting all grown up all of a sudden, has been a smooth transition. We talked through all the upcoming changes, often including the kids, and didn’t try to control things we couldn’t control anyway. We kept expectations relatively low, so we felt grateful and relieved once we arrived and realized this is an awesome place to live.

Interior deco nightmares

Then suddenly, three weeks after my arrival in The Gambia, I wake up sweating in the middle of the night. To be fair, the AC wasn’t on and it’s really hot and humid right now because of rainy season, but there was more going on. For one thing, I never wake up at night unless I have to catch an airplane. Also, I couldn’t go back to sleep because my mind was racing.

The cause? Interior decorating. It sounds ridiculous, I know, and that’s my point. It’s hard to accept that I get genuinely stressed out from decorating a new house (which I addressed once before here).  I don’t know what about it could possibly be so stressful that it ruins my entire sense of wellbeing, but it happens every single time we move. I can’t believe that decorating is a hobby for some people!

Unpacking the anxiety

I like my house to look nice. I really do. But it’s not as if my entire self image depends on how well the color on the wall matches the furniture, or if my art work is special enough. I’ve never judged anyone based on their decorating choices and I wouldn’t want to be friends with anyone who does. But I also know that, unfortunately, rationalizing it doesn’t help.

It seems I have no choice but to face my stress about this issue, however insignificant it seems on the surface.

Lack of control

The most obvious issue I have with modelling my new home after moving to a new country is that I have a severe lack of control in the matter. I didn’t get to choose the house or the furniture. I was not asked or informed about the kitchen cabinets or the landscaping. I had no choice but to accept the bars on the windows and the fencing around the house. Because I can’t choose or change the big stuff, I start spinning my wheels about things I can still influence, like maybe tearing down (I mean: thoughtfully replacing) the curtains that have a weird beige-pink color that nobody can quite describe.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m grateful to live in an awesome mansion, and for all the beautiful apartments we have been assigned to in previous tours. But there is always a side of me that is supremely frustrated that, at age 41, I’ve never had a say in where I live, or even just pick out a floor. I resent that my furniture has always been dark brown with golden handles (say the words “Drexel furniture” to any foreign service officer and they shudder).

High standards

Another emotional reaction I have is feeling rushed and overwhelmed. Our house is really big and we don’t get to see it before we move in. That means I only have a short amount of time to get familiarised and make decisions about what kinds of color and additional furniture we need, and find out if those things are even available. After all, it doesn’t make sense to wait a year when you’re only on a two or three-year assignment, right?

Of course, I could take a little bit more time for these things than I allow myself to. Or I could accept things the way they are and minimize the amount of changes and upgrades I make. But that’s not me, unfortunately. I moved a lot as a child (my single mom moved us seven times) and each time she made sure all the kids could pick their bedroom colors and we got all the types of furnishings we required for whatever stage of life we were in. And she did all of this on an extremely limited budget.

Maybe that’s where I got my high standard from? I can’t shake the feeling that I should immediately customize my new place so that my kids feel like they have a real home that welcomes them.

I dunno, I’m new here

In Europe, you can always rely on IKEA and Amazon to get everything from bunk beds to mattresses in any shape or hardness you like, while in countries like The Gambia, you either have to find a special way to import stuff (and pay for the additional shipping costs) or make do with a few local options. And we don’t really get to keep what we buy, because we have a limited weight allowance for our household when we leave. So I try to stick to finishings, like paint, and add plants, art, and rugs.

On the bright side, I’d already decided I wanted to go with “earth” colors this time and, after a short search, found an excellent paint shop. Perhaps the only paint shop in The Gambia with a mixing machine. Even though my mom taught me how to mix your own color, I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to resort to that because there are lots of giant walls to paint.

Still, for the most part I can’t just go out and buy whatever I need here. There are no familiar shops or brands, or even furniture shops in the sense that we are used to. We ended up buying our patio furniture from a tucked away consignment shop that had all their wares piled high in a dark warehouse, which I can’t even find anymore because there is no address or trace of it online. For transport, some guys with old taxis tied it to their roofs and followed our car—one of them even disappeared for a while, but we waited and he caught up.

Basically, it’s a challenge to find almost anything and once you find it, there’s the issue of negotiating, inevitably paying prices that others will make fun of later, because that’s the foreigner price and don’t I know that I could have gotten it for less than half that amount, and coordinating orders and deliveries with people who speak a different language. It takes a lot of patience and double-checking. For the paint, I took pictures of all the color cards because every time a bucket or a receipt showed up it had at least one number wrong so I had to go back and verify multiple times.

Lonely on the job

Perhaps most jarring about the whole experience is the fact that I have to do it alone. I’m not one of those people that believes their taste is the best. I prefer to have input from others and share a common vision so we can all enjoy the end result together. I constantly have everyone else in mind when I design the house. But I find it really hard to get that support within my family, and my friends with interior deco expertise are thousands of miles away.

Why my family doesn’t help me? Well, my husband is partially color blind and for the most part couldn’t care less about interior decorating. Even when he shows some interest in certain areas he lacks the stamina to do the work if it turns out to be a challenge—he’d rather just give up on the plan. Maybe he feels my opinions are too strong, because he doesn’t care quite as much and he likes to keep things simpler than I do. Probably it’s a combination of both.

My kids aren’t much help either, naturally. Their attention span is negligible, they have zero interest in helping move or unpack anything, and their wishes are solely based on their latest interests. My daughter wants her entire room to look like Stitch, the blue alien Disney character. My son wants his room to resemble his new basketballs shoes, which are black and lime green. I’ve given in to these ideas to some extent, but I feel compelled to soften their choices a bit for their own good.

Writing all this down makes me feel like my anxiety can be attributed to at least the following:  baggage from growing up moving constantly; being a bit of a control freak; not really allowing anyone else interfere with the process; and being quite particular about the design. I’m not sure this self-reflection will be the antidote to my stress, but it definitely puts things into perspective.

The Results

Results are still TBD! I love the colors I’ve chosen but it needs a lot of decoration to come together and the majority of our household stuff hasn’t arrived yet… I’ve got walls in chickpea yellow, rusty red, and sage green. And then there’s the lime green in my son’s room, paired with graphite and silvery grey. My daughter got a pink accent wall with a yellow rug, and a bunch of Stitch-themed items like a laundry basket, bed set, and decal.

I’ve got a yellow painting with three African women, which we bought in Nigeria in 2008 as our first shared art piece, that would look great here. And we can finally display our African masks again without freaking people out…