Of course I always try to acknowledge any learning experience especially if I’m in the wrong:
Months ago I ranted about breaking my dresser. I broke it in May. It was frustrating to me because I took the drawer out and left it sitting next to the dresser for almost a full month before ever trying to fix the issue. I kept moving the dresser drawer, walking around it, re-positioning it so I wouldn’t stub my toe for the umpteenth time as I walked pass. Absentmindedly, the days rolled on and I never got around to actually repairing what I knew was broken. I was showing a friend my closet one day and I realized, girlie you need to fix this thing. It is such an eyesore. You don’t want to even bring people into your bedroom because this dresser looks bad with one drawer missing.
I finally called my dad. I sent him a video about the issue and he told me what I needed to do to repair it. So I go to work. I go to Lowe’s, get what I need, pull out my toolbox and I fix the issue. I’m shocked at how easy it was and I’m admonishing myself for waiting so long to do it. While I am putting the dresser back together, feeling really good about how “easy” it was to fix, I notice the drawer is not going in. I re-do what I did before, push, pull, twist… but for some reason, this drawer is not “fitting”. Mind you, I had this dresser for 6 months before I broke it. And somehow after I fix what I broke, the drawer won’t go in.
I struggle, I switch the drawers out, in forced efforts to get it to go in , I scratch the edges of one of the dresser drawers, I’m frustrated because I don’t understand what I did wrong. After a while, I just give up. I sit the dresser drawer back on the floor and verbally say “I’m not going to deal with it. It will be okay”. Besides, I have another dresser that I can use.
2 whole months go by.
One day, while talking to a close friend and his wife about relationships, my friend admonishes me about not being where I think I am. He knows that I haven’t been in any type of serious relationship since a failed college romance 8 years ago. In his opinion, I have unsettled issues from that relationship that I have chosen not to deal with and grow from. Of course, I tell him he’s wrong. I tell him I’m healed. I tell him I was never heart-broken to begin with, just grossly disappointed in what took place at that time. Anyway, he and his wife implore that if I don’t decide to figure out what the problem is, I won’t ever be able to transition into another healthy relationship. He thinks that any healthy, whole person should be able to connect with others if that is their intent. “Krystal, he says, there is no reason why you should struggle so much to be in a healthy relationship.” According to his wife, my friend April, my failure to repair what hurts I’ve already experienced could be one of the reasons why there hasn’t been success in any other relationships. But I’m not the bitter, lonely chick. I’m not an angy black woman. I’m fine.
I go home that day remembering what they said, but positively assured that they are WRONG.
Another 3 weeks pass. It is now September. My dresser drawer is such a frustration. I am sick and tired of looking at its broken-ness. I haven’t owned it a year and the eyesore of a broken dresser is such a disappointing thing for me. I need to fix it. I need to pay someone to help me, or I need to get rid of it. I’m at the point where I am no longer okay with it being broken. It either has to be fixed, or it’s gotta go. I settle on the former. I am fed up, but I am going to fix it!
I go back to work. I try the drawer again. I push, pull, squeeze, shimmy…. still not working even though the glider is fully functioning. I eyeball the drawer. Fine. I use the drawer to measure the width of the space. Still fine. Mind you, this drawer came out of this space. I know that it fits. Goodness sake, it’s a dresser! It’s a dresser frame. It looks fine. It should be working. My drawer should glide in and out just fine, but…ugh!
Finally, I pull out the tape measure. I measure the height of both beams. Right side is 6.5 inches. (This is the side that was never broken.) Okay, we’re good to go. I measure the left side. It’s measuring almost 7 inches. Wait, what? How does that happen? I get upset. I cannot believe the poor workmanship. I did get a good deal on the dresser, but how can the beam be an entire half-inch off? Maybe that’s why I got the discount. It was faulty when I bought it and I didn’t uncover it until I had to take it apart to fix that beam! (Let’s be honest some people do get swindled out of their hard-earned money because others sell lemons all the time.)
Anyway, I tell myself that I still want to use this dresser. And though I’m upset, I’m going to really try to fix this knock-off before I just throw it away. I get up, walk to my coat closet and grab my tool box. I pull out the drill and figure I can’t mess it up any more than it already is. I haven’t had the drawer in the dresser for over 4 months. I manually take down the glider again, and decide I’m going to remove the beam I broke and drill directly into the side panel of the dresser. I’m going to make my own hole this time, fix what the manufacturer should have done right initially. “That’s just what I get for going cheap”, I say to myself as I pull the screws out of the beam.
I measure where I need to drill. I get up, go grab a pencil and come back to mark it at 6.5 inches. When I press into the side panel to mark the spot, the pencil goes into a hole. Um….
I don’t turn my head, but I look left and right as if someone else was in the room watching me. Immediately I’m ashamed. How in the world did I not see this hole? I run my fingers down the entire side post. There is a hole alright; it’s just hard to see. And it’s exactly half an inch below the hole I was previously using to attach the support beam for the drawer.
I laughed at the absurdity, but shook my head at my own negligence. I did break the dresser. I crashed into the open drawer one night when I wasn’t paying attention and I broke the support beam. It took me an entire month to fix it. To get in there and fix what I knew I broke, what I visually could see was broken, took me over a month! Then after all the rigmarole of getting it back together, I still was unable to use the dresser drawer.
It was only after I broke it back down, took all the pieces a part, took measurements to determine what new problem existed, that I was able to determine that I had not actually repaired it correctly.
I sat there shaking my head. I couldn’t believe I didn’t think to go back over my work. As usual, there was no way that “KRYSTAL” could be wrong in this. Here I am blaming it on faulty manufacturing, and the dresser worked fine when I bought it. The problem rested in me not putting the pieces back together correctly. I thought I did, but that was not the case.
As I was pushing the drawer back into the dresser frame, I could hear April advise: “Until you figure out what healing hasn’t taken place, you won’t be able to move into another healthy relationship. There are some things you may still be hurting from.”
I got up from the floor and took a picture of the repaired dresser to send to my dad.
I never sent the photo [shown right], but as I was putting the drill away, I was thinking: “It’s a shame I had to go back and repair what I thought I had already fixed.”
I thought about the advice from James and April.
Maybe some measuring is required in other areas of my life…
Thanks for reading,
Eve UnYoked
Eve Unyoked 