Hardwood Epoxy
Bound for the Floor
By Yahoo Silverman
What good is confidence?
Just past the front door of my home, in the heart of my living room, there is a hole in the floor: 6 feet deep, 3 ½ feet wide, and 8 feet in length. I never really talk about the it because it’s humiliating, I mean what kind of adult am I that I live in a home with a hole in the middle of the floor. I can’t afford to have it fixed and have no clue how to fix it myself. As a result, I never invite people over and if they show up unannounced and uninvited, no matter how long they knock on my door, I don’t let them in.
I used to lay boards over the hole and do my best to pretend that it wasn’t there. Sometimes, with the boards situated atop the hole, I’d forget about it completely and could live comfortably in my home as if there weren’t a me sized cavity beneath a stopgap solution in the middle of the floor. Over time, the boards would bend and splinter with every step I’d take across them and when they would finally break, I would land in the hole: 6 feet deep, 3 ½ feet wide, and 8 feet in length. Over time it has become more arduous and painfully onerous to climb my way out of it.
And you Just don't get it
A few months ago, I found out someone that I once knew had a hole in her floor. I never knew about it because I never asked. It had been several years since I’d seen her. It was the middle of the day when I received a message that she had fallen into the hole and wasn’t coming back. I know from experience that the hole can be congenial to someone that fears the fall or the sound of a knock at the door, there’s comfort in knowing that you’ve already fallen and if you stay in place then you cannot fall again, and although one who finds themselves in the hole may not miss the world, the world will certainly miss them. They were a good person; they didn’t deserve the hole in their floor.
I wonder how many more people I know have holes in their floors. I wonder how many of them have holes in rooms we will never knew existed. I wonder how many of them will fall into it. I wonder how many of them will crawl into it. I wonder, but I never ask.
I've learned all my lessons before now
I cannot be sure, but sometimes I think the hole is growing deeper, wider, or longer. Maybe it’s all three or any combination of them. I’m afraid to measure it, maybe refusing to do so is a different form of laying boards atop it.
I’ve tried filling the hole with chemicals, but they just absorb into the ground while its residue eats away at the surrounding floorboards and its fumes burn my eyes and impair my vision causing me to fall into the hole more frequently. I’ve tried filling the hole with clothes, electronics, and other things that I hoped would cushion the fall, all to no avail.
Maybe I’m doing this all wrong. Maybe the next time I’m invited to someone’s home I should survey their floors and look for evidence of a repaired hole. Maybe they could give me advice, maybe they could give me a hand.
