Cleaning

When I was in high school, I became obsessed with re-arranging my room. I'd do it once a week, sometimes twice a week if something extra stressful was going on. My room became the product of my emotional fluctuations, something that gave me breathtaking control. And I used it.

Sometimes I even used it by letting the room fill up with old bowls of cereal until the milk was congealed. I'd wear dirty laundry for weeks at a time, plucking the garments from the floor like musty flowers and dousing them with Love Spell perfume.

But there would always be a time, a breaking point, a straw to break the camel of my heart's back. Usually I'd be sitting in the mess, watching one of those Disney original movies. They used to have a new one every month, do you remember? Zenon, and Johnny Tsunami, and Rip Girls, and Cadet Kelly. I'd watch the girls in the movies, I'd look at their clean hair and acne free faces, I'd watch them worry about dates to the dance and if the waves at the beach were big enough to ride today.

Then I'd look around me, and I'd see the congealed milk and dirty clothes and acne creams that cluttered my precious space. Old school papers that were due yesterday but still blank that were piled on the carpet. I'd hear the garage door open, which meant that people were home, but since it didn't really matter, since "people are home" meant "you'll still be in here all night with your door closed," I'd start to cry.

I'd cry on my bed, like a five year old, howling into her pillow and clutching the stuffed kitten that she'd had since she could remember. I was a sixteen year old baby that totally and completely accepted the fact that her whole tomorrow, that her whole life, would be nothing but agony and emotional instability. The cutting helped, the music helped, but nothing ever solved anything.

Ten minutes later, the crying would cease and I'd stare, hiccuping, around my disgusting mess of a room.

And I'd clean.

Up came the papers, into the Lisa Frank binder instead of the trash, out went the congealed milk. The laundry would be done after five consecutive loads, folded perfectly in my drawer or hung in my closet.

I carefully laid out a green rope light to surround my bed, and adjusted the Sailor Moon and Hello Kitty wall hangs to make the walls different.

The fitted sheet was to have absolutely no bunches in the corners, or loose folds of cloth that would terrorize me in the night with their intruding feeling of chaos. The loose sheet would be placed design side down, so that when I pulled them up and over my head I'd still be able to see the tiny Care Bears and rainbows and sunshine.

And after three hours or so, I'd have a new room to live in, a new place to support my desire to be who I wanted to be. A normal girl, a happy girl, a girl who produced art that everyone loved. A girl who didn't have a horrible monster in her closet, or an innocent journal that was forced to endure constant hell.

I wish so bad that I could tell that girl to hang on, that help was coming, that someday her over emotional words would make it to paper and get read by a hot shot New York City literary agent that took her out for pizza and breakfast while she visited for her online BFF's book release in the city. And that those words were able to find their place because of true love, a miracle too big for God named Edmund, a person that saw something in her.

Even years after I've moved out, I still rearrange my house from time to time. I find that it's much more productive, and more kind to my looks, than a spontaneous haircut after three glasses of wine.

I still have lots of things from my old room, including my Care Bears blanket and trinkets. In high school, the trinkets were usually lined up on the shelf behind my bed, or my dresser, or my window sill. No matter where they were, they stood a few inches apart in all their Representation of Amy glory.

A small gold violin with tiny diamonds on the strings, a small framed picture of my dead golden retriever, a porcelain bunny whose ear is broken off, a bronze Buddah statue given to me by someone I loved with all my heart. I still have them all, funnily enough. They are in line on the shelf by my front door, and my daughter loves to grab them and hold them and rearrange them.

I watch her play with them, kiss the picture of the dog, look in wonder at the Buddah. She knocks them around, squeals with joy, then pads away to the next "Dat?"

I watch her walk away and smile.

Of course, as soon as she's gone I put them all back.