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 �what is Man? a miserable little pile of secrets.� - andr� malraux "i desire to live in peace and to continue the life i have begun under the motto, to live well you must live unseen." - rene descartes note random entry image credit design by : ilazarn ikmal powered by : diaryland |
what normal is.
2016-12-01 @ 7:19 p.m.
i am trying to get rid of a lot of things i have around here. a lot of them are trash, a lot of them are not trash but have sat unused for too long, and a lot of them are relics of everyone who has passed through here. once i started visualizing my rooms without everyone else's things in them, i realized how little i brought here with me, and how much i accumulated over the years, and i really want to pare it down a bit. i've had this weird stomach bug the past couple days and i've been home from work but just sitting around watching 20/20 and dateline. this evening i finally felt enough energy to at least clean off all of the mail and old paper that had built up on the kitchen counter, and when i was done i felt so much better. i came into the living room and there was some episode on about a murder in a girl's apartment and they were showing crime scene photos of the entire apartment and it was a mess. not a disgusting mess, but it definitely needed a good weekend of tidying. and i was watching this, and then i started noticing what it looked like in other people's houses on other shows, and i was like hey! i have some clutter around my house but it's not nearly as bad as some of the places i've seen today. my entire life, up until even now, my mother has had insane standards of cleanliness and neatness. she is one of those people who has a house that looks like no one lives in it, and several rooms that no one is allowed to enter. can you imagine that 100% seriously, for 20 years of your life, there are 2 rooms in your home that you aren't even allowed to step foot in or someone will freak out at you? and then after i moved out and had my apartments that i kept spotless except for little piles of clutter (your typical hanging jacket on the back of a chair instead of in a closet, some laundry on the floor of your room instead of in a basket, some piles of mail and paper trash sitting on the counter instead of immediately sorted and in the trash, etc), i was told that i was a "pig" and i lived like a "disgusting cow." i have been moved out from my parents' for 15 years now, but they have only been down to my place 3 times in all these years. after i bought this house i repeatedly invited them over for dinner, and my stepdad said he was going to come by himself since my mom has always refused to come. why? "because i don't want to see how you've trashed it. i bet it's disgusting. you like to live in a garbage pile." fucking seriously? i think one of the most valuable things that therapy has taught me is that sometimes it's okay to compare yourself to others, especially if you're wondering if you're "normal." i've always been so embarrassed to have people over because my house didn't look like a magazine. anytime someone comes in i start apologizing for how terrible and messy it is. now i realize that yeah, people have clutter around. some people's homes ARE literally trashed. i need to stop being so hard on myself. even though i may not be able to stop her voice from running through my head, criticizing every move i make, i don't necessarily have to listen to her. it's hard but i'm working. |