i cleaned my room today.
that, to anyone else, wouldn’t have been a big deal. but for me, it’s a step of being “over it”.
mental illness makes it hard to do anything. it makes it hard to get out of bed, to eat a meal, to go to a meeting or apply for a job or learn how to drive or apply for colleges – depression makes it hard for me to live life. for me, at least. some people’s illness manifests in obsessive organization and cleanliness. i wish i could be like that, but i never have been, and i never will be. you knew that.
there are a lot of reasons that i hadnt cleaned my room in a while. it took a long time, it wasnt something i WANTED to do, and there were always more important things to get done when i finally motivated myself to do something. but the main reason is that the last time my room was clean, you were with me.
it was near the end of summer, the weekend before labor day, and my family was going camping. my mom told me i could stay home alone if we told my dad i was staying at a friends house, and we did. and of course, i snuck you in.
i didn’t have a room yet. the weekend or two before, me and my mom had gone to ikea and bought a bunch of new things for my room. u was so excited to not have horse wallpaper and a blue and green kid’s bunk bed anymore. and i was excited because you were coming to help me put it together.
i was imagining it like a movie scene, you and i building an ikea bed and desk and shelves together, like we were moving into an apartment together. it was magical.
but it wasnt.
it was a hard. you yelled at me. i cried. you were frustrated and i didnt know what to do. you wouldnt let me help you so i stood there and watched as you struggle. i dont remember exactly how it happened but you slapped me out of the blue, intending for it to be sexy and rough like you knew i liked, but it sent me into a full blown panic attack and you held me in the middle of an unfinished bedframe until i was okay again. we didnt finish the bed, we went upstairs and fucked on the futon a few times before we fell asleep.
i finished the bed by myself. i built everything else by myself, too. i stood back in wonder at my own room, almost the way it was intended to be. it looked the way i had imagined, but it wasnt full of happy memories of us creating it together.
a few weeks later, we broke up. it was messy and awful and i still blame you because i know i did everything i could to make it work and you gave up and fell in love with someone else.
i cried every night for more than a month in the bed that you gave up on building because you gave up on building us, too.
today while i was cleaning i found clothes of yours. a captain america shirt, a plain white tank top, some weird hippie art shirt, and a knit beanie. this is what i dreaded. i also found a stuffed horse you gave me, that still smelled like your mom’s house, and the necklace that you made for my 17th birthday. i shoved them all in a box on my IKEA shelving unit that i built all by myself, without you. and now here i am, typing this mess out. i needed to get it out. so i did. and now I’m going back to cleaning.