I'm still really bad about cleaning my
room. It's odd because overall I like to keep things neat and in
order. My DVD collection is organized alphabetically. My books are
arranged in a way that makes sense to me, at least. I'm not someone
that's necessarily comfortable living amidst a mess. That being
said, I can't help but think back to my room cleaning methods of
years past. What happened to your messes when you were a kid?
There's really no reason to build this up—because we all did it.
Pile of laundry? Under the bed. Toys? Books? Magazines? Under
the bed. No exaggeration—I couldn't even hide under my bed
sometimes when I was playing Hide & Seek with my brothers and
sisters because there was so much crap under my bed that there was
absolutely no room for me.
While I'm happy to say that most of my
laundry is in its proper place (or thereabouts), and there is plenty
of empty space under my bed at the moment, I wonder if this attitude
hasn't lived on throughout the years. Anyone that's had any kind of
interaction with a young child will know that the concept of logic
isn't something that comes very naturally to most younger humans.
It's something that we (hopefully) develop as we grow and mature into
adults. I can look back now and realize that it was silly of me to
think I was making my life easier by shoving everything under my bed.
My “logic” at the time was flawless. It was fast, painless, and
it solved the problem of everything being in the middle of the floor.
Of course, inevitably my mom or dad would notice, and then my logic
and easy fix quickly fell apart. I made nothing easier. I can still
hear the ever-knowing voice of my parents in my head, “It would
have been easier if you'd done it right the first time”.
It would have been easier if you'd
done it right the first time. Sad to say I still relate to this
statement far more than I'm willing to admit most days. Why do I
still cling to this attitude; that somehow if I shove all these nasty
attitudes, bad habits, and things that I don't want to deal with
(much less want other people to see) underneath the place that I
sleep that this will somehow make my life easier? Somehow I have
continued to allow the logic that dominated my 8 year old brain make
a comeback and if I'm honest with myself, do far more damage than it
ever did when I was harmlessly childish. Outwardly I have almost
everything together. I have my life arranged alphabetically. In a
way that makes sense to me and most people who might scrutinize it.
But the truth is, there isn't a whole lot of space under my bed for
me to hide.
I don't do bugs. It's not a serious
phobia, but I'd much rather them stay in their natural habitat and
allow me the peace and sound mind of being in mine without
disturbance. I don't like things crawling around where I sleep.
However, my bedroom is located in a basement that is partially
underground, and this means that more often than I'd like, things
that creep and crawl and have 8 legs find their way into my cave. I
can't go to sleep when I know there's something sneaking around my
room—especially when I've just witnessed it crawling out from under
my bed, which happens far more often than I'd even like to discuss.
For me, this also hearkens back to my childhood and the classic fear
of what creature might be hiding under the bed. How many of us had
that persisting irrational fear that something would reach out and
attack our bare feet when we swung them off the bed?
I see these attitudes and habits that
I am so quick to shove under my bed and the fear associated with
what's hiding there very much connected. I'm not making my life any
easier by shoving these things out of sight and refusing to deal with
them out in the open. I have made an already existing problem an
even bigger one, and now, on top of that, I face the fear of being
discovered. Not only have I made a mess of the already existing one,
but now it has grown into something else; something I don't want to
dig up and face for fear that it is now beyond my ability to
suppress. I don't like things crawling around where I sleep. And
yet, I continue shoving things under my bed, letting them grow there,
wondering why I sleep restlessly—wondering when the monster will
strike.
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