A Guest in My Own Home

K. Jackson
Jul 23, 2017 · 3 min read

Church bells ring, time to get up. I fall out of bed, rumpled and tangled. I look for the shirt I had been imagining last night I would wear today and it is nowhere to be found. I dig through the piles of clothes I have carefully thrown on the chairs by the windows — always a good find — and no, it is not there. Not in the closet. Not on the floor. Not in the laundry room, either. Neither Sara nor Clark have seen it. I must change my mind.

I put on another shirt.

Sara takes me to work and I get there on time. I put my bag down in the office and then I start making the coffee. Good for me. I get all the opening tasks done just in time to wait. You know how they always say to look around, there is always something to do? Before today I always got so bored! Bored with looking for things to do, not bored of waiting. While waiting I could always check my phone or daydream. But today! Glorious today! I look around. I set myself to organizing the magazine rack, and I make a mental note to bring in some of my own used magazines. I look down, and the shelf where we keep the champagne flutes is disgusting so I break that down and clean it. I clean some more.

Ever since college, I have trouble at home figuring out what to do with myself. I start to read and I glaze over, I feel so lonely. I start to clean and I think why not just leave it until tomorrow. I watch TV. What’s the point.

I know that sounds terribly slack of me, like maybe I just didn’t have structure growing up or maybe my parents did too much for me. While the second may be true, I will say Reese and I were made to clean up our own spaces and our bathrooms on a regular basis, and we had to clean up after dinner, too. We were both involved in sports and church and why am I trying to convince you I am a good person? I have been depressed.

But today I think to myself, why not just take this work mentality home. Perhaps that would help me to see the details. I don’t know exactly what depression is, but I know that it affects everything. I think if I were to start seeing those little details, I’d be better able to sit and read, and to write. I would be able to feel comfort from being in my home, rather than feeling like it sucks the life out of me. What if I were to live in a flat over a cafe in a cool city somewhere? I could walk downstairs and appease the extravert in me, and then walk back upstairs and pretend it was just an extension of the cafe. Maybe then I would take time to clean the little places, and thusly take better care of myself on the whole. Maybe I need to think of myself for a little while as a guest in my own home.

K. Jackson

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