Seeing the mess

When I was younger, I did not like to clean my room. Every horizontal surface would be covered with stuff. Tornados could drop the tons of shit they were whirling around in the funnels into my room and no one would have known the difference. My mom would go crazy. Clean your room. Clean your room. CLEAN YOUR ROOOOOOM MAWGGGRRRAAAWW. Then I would fake-clean (yeah you've all done it before, no need for an explanation). But really I didn't care because I couldn't really see the mess.

Then one day it changed. I blinked and saw dirty dishes left on the coffee table. Clothes on the floor of the closet. Mountains of sock left next to the bed. Stuff that had been left on the bathroom counter for so long that they had cemented themselves on. It sort of felt like when I first got my period (peering down, "what the f*ck!?!?"). And once you are able to see the mess, you have to clean it.

I'm not sure what triggered this. I think it is probably a part of the normal maturation process. Like second puberty. Unfortunately, Jonker is not there yet. He's a late bloomer. And what that means is that I find his used q-tips laying about here and there. Once, I found one on my side of the bathroom counter. He might as well have taken a dump and smeared it on the wall. If you could punch, strangle, stab or shoot a q-tip, I would have done all of those things at that moment. So I took those used q-tips and stuck them in his precious cufflink box. The man loves his cufflinks. Muhahaha, the ultimate revenge! I was gleeful. But the q-tips stayed there untouched for over a week. After which I couldn't stand seeing them anymore and I threw them out. HOW DOES THAT NOT BOTHER HIM?!

In any case, it's unfortunate that I am now able to see the mess. Cuz once you get a baby, the mess quadruples. It sextuples. It manymoreuples. It's hard to let go, but when baby is throwing rice crackers and yelling at you because she no longer has her rice crackers AND GET ME MORE RICE CRACKERS OR I WILL SMEAR MY POOP ON YOUR FACE, YEAH RUN, RUN FASTER YOU SLOWASS AND RIP OPEN THAT NEW PACKAGE OF RICE CRACKERS AND PUT IT IN MY MOUTH nom nom nom, then you learn to let go.

Every day at 7 when I put her to sleep, I come out to face this. And clean this. Every damn day.