The Things Under My Bed

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.