A Confession of Messiness

Let me describe to you the unfortunate mess that is piled across my desk at this moment. On the far left is a shoebox of three dollar cosmetics and hairclips. Beside that, a clutter of half-full of water glasses and crusty-bottomed tea and coffee mugs. Two pencil cups crammed full of paintbrushes, pens, and colored pencils. There is also a rusty fork in there which sort of baffles me. Underneath that are scraps of paper with to-do lists and doodles and crumpled homework assignments, blank notecards, jewelry, my wallet, headphones, borrowed CDs, a book of Phillip Levine poems, and a thin layer of dust. I can’t remember the last time my desk was even remotely tidy, despite my valiant attempts to keep everything in order.

The rest of my room is in similar disarray. It has been like this for years, much to my mother’s chagrin. A couple years ago, when my brother left for college, I took over his room, which is signifigantly larger than my old one. But somehow my mess is always also proportionately slightly too large for the space I’ve been allotted. It’s not like I have a particularly large volume of possesions—my childhood obsession with collecting endless tchotchkes disappeared years ago and now I try to buy as little junk as possible (though I confess it is still sort of a struggle). It is just that everything seems to pile up and overflow; even things I haven’t used in months seem to surface on my bedroom floor and get in the way.

This has caused a certain amount of tension in my family. I remember getting in trouble for leaving messes around the house more than anything else when I was younger. There was a period when I was very young when I’d leave balled up socks around the house. I remember fighting with my parents almost daily about it, but for some reason refusing to change my habits. Later on I graduated to leaving half empty cans of flat fizzy water in my room, which frustrated my parents even more. I have no if I was simply unable to change or if a seven-year-old me was playing passive aggressive games. Despite being the world’s sullenest child, I have to suspect the former. Either way, at this point it is a steadfast habit; it is my way of life.

And it isn’t just the way I keep my room or locker. My everything is messy, my brain is messy—and I like it that way. My notebooks are always full of doodles and nonsensical scribbles. I keep my hair and clothes and social life in what I hope is a cheerful disarray. I don’t mind being a slob. I think other people who are forced to cohabit or share spaces with me mind a lot more than I ever will. I’d like to think that messy=free spirited, but I’m more and more convinced that messy just equals messy. But this also means that being messy doesn’t make me lazy or impolite or boorish, which is all I really want to convince people of. I guess it is just a bad habit.