Building a house on a broken foundation

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Put too much strain on the chain and that weakest link will inevitably break, thus leaving you with a broken chain. What you’re left with, however, is still, by every definition of the word, a chain, albeit a shorter chain. Or perhaps two chains, depending on whether or not the original was a loop. The shortest link breaking, therefore, is of little importance to every other link. The chain may have become useless for its original purpose, but what’s left still functions as a chain. No part of it is any more or less important than any other.

This common saying is therefore, in my opinion, often misused. Or at the very least, it often oversimplifies things. I understand that this is the entire point of analogies, a way of easily and succinctly expressing the essence of something, but still, I’d argue that for most situations, there's a better alternative: a house is only as sturdy as its foundation. Once that foundation breaks, the entire house comes down with it, or puts the entire house at danger of coming down.

So what do you do when you determine that your foundation is in fact broken, or at the risk of breaking? A quick Google search (I’m a middle class millennial in 2023, do you really think I have any experience owning a house?) reveals the first result: just sell the house as-is. Sadly, that doesn’t really work for the point I’m trying to get across. Scrolling down a bit more shows that if a foundation is broken beyond repair, you might want to get the foundation replaced, which involves lifting the entire house off of its foundation in the process. The costs of this often exceed the value of the house. You’d be better off just tearing the entire house and its foundation down, and start building a completely new house.

What if the house has sentimental value, though? What if you’ve lived your entire life in this house already. It holds all your memories, all your experiences, your entire sense of self. It can be incredibly scary and painful to have to give that all up, especially since you can’t know ahead of time what this new house will be like. Will it even feel like home?

You may have put together that I’m not actually talking about houses here. This is a piece about mental health. My own mental health, specifically. The house, in this case, is me, and the broken foundation is depression. I am depressed. Looking back, I think I’ve been depressed for as long as I can remember. I didn’t always recognize it as such, and there have certainly been both ups and downs, but at no point in my life do I think I’ve been able to say “yes, I am happy” and actually mean it.

You should probably get help, I hear you say, and you would be completely correct. In fact, I’ve gotten help in the past. I’ve been to therapy several times as a child and as a teenager. However, it turns out that doesn’t help all that much when instead of confronting things you don’t want to confront you just tell the therapist what they want to hear. And because you don’t want others to worry about you, because they might otherwise want to talk about things you don’t want to talk about, you get really good at deflecting and avoiding having to talk about your issues.

People have told me that I’m quick-witted and have a good sense of humor. Skills that I have honed through that exact process: avoiding having to talk about how I really feel. And I think I’ve built my entire personality around that. To the point where I don’t even know if that is my actual personality, or if I even have one anymore. Who am I? What am I? It’s a question that often keeps me up at night, which is not helped by the fact that most nights I conclude that the answer to those questions might be: nothing. My house might be built on a broken foundation.

That is, if there even is a house. If it’s all made up, all just a tactic to stop people from worrying, and from asking difficult questions, is there even anything there at all? Am I really just a broken foundation, and nothing else? I like to think I know who I am. I’m a collection of all my memories, of all my experiences, and thus the product thereof. Except so many of those memories and experiences involve pain, involve loss, involve trauma. If there is a house, it may have an acceptable facade, but it is fundamentally and structurally flawed. Any inspection by an expert would certainly qualify this house as being uninhabitable - dangerous even.

I should get help. Professional help. Deep down I know this to be true. This house is broken beyond repair, and it’s not going to get any safer if I keep living in it. Surely this house will need to be torn down, down to its very foundation. But if I do that, then who will I be? Is it even worth rebuilding this house? I mean, yeah, no one in their right mind would want to live here, but they don’t have to. I live here. I have always lived here. It’s familiar. Most days I’ll even say it’s comfortable. It’s mine.

Building a new house is scary. I touched on this in my Bloodborne essay the other day as well, but because of my ASD, I need to fully analyze a new situation before taking part in it, lest I am overcome with panic. I can’t do that here. I can’t analyze this new situation, because I need to get out of the old situation first. I can’t start building this new house, this new foundation, before the old one is gone. There’s no way for me to know what this new house will be like. There’s no way for me to know what my new “me” will be like.

This is an unknown that I can’t possibly prepare for, and that terrifies me. I completely freeze just imagining it. If I stay here, the foundation will eventually break, and the house will cave in, taking me out with it, but at least I know what is coming. It’s something I can anticipate, something I can prepare for. And when it all comes down, at least it will bury me in the things that I’ve always known, and somehow that is still preferable.

On the best of days I’m already struggling with my sense of self. Who am I, really? Am I simply what everyone perceives me as? Possibly. But I know that how people perceive me is a heavily curated, heavily edited version of myself. The version that will result in the least amount of awkward questions and worried looks. I want to believe that that is the person I am, but I know that it's not true. The actual me is much uglier. The actual me is a house that - due to the way it was constructed - was never safe to live in. The cracks run across every wall, every floor, every ceiling. It’s dusty. It’s dilapidated. Quite frankly, it should probably be condemned.

The alternative answer to that question is that this is not me. I am not my mental illness. I am not my depression. I am not my coping mechanisms. But if that’s the case, the answer to “who am I?” becomes even more bleak. Because I don’t know who I am beyond that - beyond those things.

If you were hoping for a conclusion to this piece, I regret to inform you that there is none. No shimmer of light to take away from the tangible hopelessness expressed in the paragraphs above. I could crack a joke, though, if you'd like? After all, that’s how I’ve always handled situations like these. But I fear it would be in poor taste now. Then again, maybe a joke has been hiding in this piece all along. Not the "ha ha funny" kind of a joke, but more the cosmic irony kind of joke. This entire piece has revolved around the question “what do you do with a broken house with a broken foundation?”, but I was setting myself up for failure when it comes to actually answering that question. After all, that’s not really something you ask the house.