dirty dirty girl
my non sexual comments on being dirty and no reading recommendations today because my train wifi connection is being funny with me.
As I write this, I look around my dirty messy apartment room and feel disappointed and embarrassed ; didn’t I just clean that part of the house? Why is it messy again? My non-existent “working desk” where I both eat and work is busy with my notebooks and laptop cords and several cups from a day or two ago. On the right of me, there’s my notebook but I can’t even open it because my Apple trackpad is right there and my ‘desk’ is too small. I have my Nelgene water bottle, two candles that I never light up because lighting up candles in Tokyo summer feels like an insane idea. I have a stationary cup - I had that phase for giant cups with statements on it like in this case ‘but first coffee’ - that holds a bunch of random pencils and pens. I have several books on rotation on my ‘desk’ and then in the true form of who I am, I have multiple governmental documents lying around just yearning to be opened up but I continue to neglect them for months. Or some envelopes are open but they just haven’t been dealt with because admin intimidates me.
One time, when my friend Alyssa came to my house she said in passing, “Yeah, you do have a lot of stuff.” while looking through my stuff. The what if I need it someday? is what gets me every time when I try to do a big clean up. That’s why I can’t throw away my doctor’s appointment paper from 2019 or something about my stock money from two companies ago that I literally have no idea what it's even about. I’m not indifferent to these artifacts lying around my house, I just feel frustrated and it stops there.
I always thought that my house is tasteful enough - as in it has some character to it - but after knowing other interesting, artsy and cooler people than myself, I feel like my house is just messy and it has no theme. Do you know that show in the UK called Naked Attraction? People just show their naked body parts and the contestant decides who they like based on their body parts without seeing the face. If there is a similar game but for identifying who’s house belongs to who, I feel like everyone can pick my house based on the messiness and not because of how it looks or feels. That to me makes me feel deeply sad and ashamed of myself. (A note on shame and how internalized this is because there is no such game that exists but here I am sulking about it.)
I always wanted to talk about this feeling and I probably will next time actually but I have been feeling …creatively fragile*.1 Matching colors or having spacial awareness has never been my skill. Alison Roman sometimes mentions this in her videos too but when I try to bake or cook and it requires a mixing bowl, the mixing bowl is always - most certainly always - too small for the ingredients that have been assembled. Same thing happens to AR. The only thing about having a smaller mixing bowl than anticipated is that you can always transfer it into something bigger. It’s very solvable. As for furniture or house stuff, the risk is higher. Furniture is more expensive, and once you know you have the wrong size - you kind of can’t be like I actually want to return it. I hate measuring and I just don’t know how things will look unless it’s actually in my house. This is very unhelpful when deciding furniture and probably why I bought a 10 size too big of a bed that cost me 10 times too much that now I want to get rid of.
I feel ashamed for not taking care of my house as often as I should. My parents used to always say how messy my room is and that I need to clean my room more well in my late 20s. (I moved out of my parents house at 23) They specifically sent me off by saying, “Keep your house clean!” One time when I was out of the country for a while, I had my dad come over to water my plants. (Terrifying to think that I just let my dad into my apartment like that.) He later told me, “Megumi, your house…” and then went on to say that my kettle on the stove is too sticky from not cleaning it. I knew that but I just never got to cleaning it because I am inherently lazy and it never practically inconvenienced me. However as I am writing a 1000 word essay on how insecure I am for my room being messy, I am definitely aware of it - and someone like my parents affirming my insecurities that I’m a messy, lazy piece of shit doesn’t help to solve the problem.
Then Megumi, why not take action and just pick a corner and clean your house! If only. My boyfriend and I had this discussion recently that for the both of us, it takes a while to actually do the thing that’s on our to-do list but once we get ourselves to do it, we can’t believe how relieving and most importantly how easy and little time it took. These are moments to visualize kindness to ourselves too. It was so easy to build up the unnecessary anxieties and worst case scenarios. In theory, it should be as easy to practice kindness to ourselves - if only. I’m kidding! It should be easy but it is strange that we are the most hard on ourselves and being kind is a difficult antidote.
In about two hours, I have strangers coming into my house to assess if they can take my BoConcept bed for free or for some money*2. I’ve been inquiring so many companies if they can take my bed for a couple of times now, and I even listed my bed on Facebook! (I redownloaded it just for that!) but no one seems to want it. I have a crooked shelf behind my bed frame that my boyfriend jokes that he’s afraid to sleep on my bed because shit might fall on him - oh yes, I found someone who is as or more of a drama queen than I am - but that shelf will be disposed of finally in a week or so. It’s been in mind to take care of stuff in my house and make my house more of who I am now. I moved in here in 2019 and lots have changed but the interior sadly didn’t follow. I remind myself that it’s never too late to take care of my house and give it some new character and life to it as I grow and change. It’s time for a little sprucing up.
creatively fragile is a word I just made up :) I don’t think I coined it but let’s say I did.
It turns out that I can’t get any money for it! I let it go - and I’m going to dissemble it by myself and pay 15,000 yen for them to take it away.