The Move-In

The move-in was much better, but it was stressful for me in another way. Since we had a bunch of extra people in there moving in and out tramping all over, the apartment felt greasy, the floor was sticky, the air was murky and there were boxes everywhere. My room had too much stuff in it, the apartment had too much garbage in it, and the kitchen was full of boxes, and nothing was clean. It felt very claustrophobic. It is a terrible thing to be in your own home and feel penned in, imprisoned, like you had no place to move, no place to spread out, no place to relax. It's just a messy place though right? Why am I whining? I think I was feeling so very uneasy because I was feeling a physical sensation that mirrored the emotional situation I had just escaped. I had just finished a few months in an apartment with a roommate who, at least in my interpretation, had this air of discontent, disapproval and walled-off anger about him that filled the apartment with an emotionally oppressive quality. It does not feel good to share space with a person who finds you disgusting. Even with physical room to move around he made the place feel claustrophobic because the only time I didn't feel like I was garbage was when I closed myself into my room and hid. I spent the weekend fixing all this though. I literally and figuratively threw out the trash.

If your home is a mess it can make you feel down, so to most people it would make perfect sense to clean it up. If your home life is a mess though you end up feeling even worse and the cause isn't as easy to see. A lot of people will put up with a home life that is full of crap for a lot longer than they'd tolerate a messy home. I have to say, once you have them both cleaned up you feel a lot better and everything seems a bit brighter.