Help! I've Fallen into too Much Responsibility and I Can't Get Up

Maggie Slepian

I’ll never forget the time I Failed at Everything. It was a few years ago, and I was living by myself in the house I had recently purchased. I accepted a housesitting job across town to watch a rather neurotic dog, and I had my own emotionally damaged cat at home. I was also working three jobs and it was the middle of winter.

This two-week period happened to be the heaviest snow of the year—it was relentless. The family didn’t have a snowblower, and I had to keep their driveway and the sidewalk clear. I also had to keep my own driveway clear. I also had to walk this dog twice a day, run home twice a day to feed my own neglected cat, and stay on top of my remote work, teaching gig, and coffee shop work. It was a lot, and I did really poorly.

The dog was miserable because I wasn’t around enough. My cat was more of a train wreck than usual being home alone all day and night. Both driveways had so much snow accumulated I couldn’t keep up. My plants died, and I did badly at every single job. Even my coffee shop job! I had taken on too much responsibility, and it went terribly. 

I’ve written about being overextended, and my inability to say no to, well, anything. This housesitting debacle was me being overextended in the form of having too much responsibility.

I bought a house in 2018 because it seemed like a sound financial decision. If I look up the value of my house today, that decision did end up being quite financially sound. But owning a house by myself wasn’t something I wanted to do, and honestly it still isn’t. When things are going well, it’s all fine and dandy. I can sweep my kitchen floor to my anxiety’s delight and pick up every stray clump of hair from my shedding-machine of a cat. But when things fall apart, like a water line bursting under my floor, or my yard succumbing to a veritable army of weeds, I can’t cope. I sometimes wish I had purchased a condo or apartment. They might come with astronomical fees, but those fees pay someone you can call when a door hinge breaks or your backyard fence is crooked. But nope! With the house it’s just me! And it’s too much responsibility! 

I have never been able to keep plants alive, whether by having no botanical instinct or just an inability to water correctly. Even a succulent dies in my care. My cat essentially keeps himself alive, and with everything he’s gotten into and eaten, he might honestly be immortal.

I have a for-real tenant living in my house right now, and seeing his deposit drop into my account took the whole “responsibility” thing to the next level. Until now, I’d occasionally rented one of my upstairs rooms to a friend going through a breakup, or someone in the community needing a place to crash for a few months. It was always casual, there were no deposits involved, and if something went wrong in the house, it didn’t really matter. Now, there is a person who signed a lease and I am the one they signed it with. If something goes wrong, it’s on me. 

The day before he moved in, I was trying to get his closet doors back into their tracks. Instead of fixing the one door that was off the track, I broke both of them. I struggled to get them back in, but alas. When he arrived, I sheepishly apologized and said that for the time being, his closet was lacking doors.

There are some things I do well: keeping up on work, maintaining some semblance of physical fitness, and drawing horses. Other things I don’t do well. Repairs to the house when things go sideways intimidates the hell out of me. I wish I had a partner invested in the house with me, so there could be someone to help fix things, or who might know what to do. I’ve floundered around and figured it out thus far, but what it boils down to is that owning a house and having an official lease-bound tenant feels like an overwhelming amount of responsibility. I have mostly done ok thus far, but it still feels like a lot. 

But then again, I’m writing this piece from my own front porch. I have a cat inside wearing a Hawaiian shirt who is alive and healthy. My tenant seems happy even though he doesn’t have closet doors, and eventually I’ll figure out how to nurse my lawn back to health. What it boils down to is that as we get older, most of us will somehow fall into more responsibility whether we want to or not. It just happens. Even if you’re like me and you resent / are intimidated by these life progressions, it will all work out in the end, even if you blunder your way through it until it does.