(Please, don’t read this post if you’re feeling queasy or are squeemish)
Well, yesterday I discovered that my housemates, the mice had been mostly hanging out in one particular corner of the room… so I investigated. What I found were hideous amounts of droppings… and two dirty plates that had been rotting there since I don’t know when (October/November, I think). I’m a little creeped out, and now wary of cleaning the rest of my bedroom, for fear of what else might be lurking.
So, I vacuumed up, and threw the plates away (to my slight satisfaction). I don’t have very many, but since I don’t know how long they were there, I obviously have more than enough for my purposes. Coincidentally, I bought a full set of new crockery yesterday (well, two each of dinner plates, medium plates, bowls and one mug), in an experiment to see if having plates that I liked and cared about would galvanise me into doing the washing up more often. (Took me ages to find some I liked, and I’m still not happy with them, but they were knocked down to 70% their original price, so I was unlikely to find anything cheaper than they were). I’m planning to chuck all my old plates out, and just leave the new ones. What a consumerist lifestyle I lead, huh?
It’s kinda embarrassing really. I’d like to think I was the kind of person who keeps a tidy house, but it’s something I always fail at, and never more so than when I’m depressed. When I’m too depressed to get out of bed, it’s not really a problem (except that the dust starts piling up), so I can only assume the plates date to a time before that, when I was too depressed to do the washing up, but still eating. This isn’t a side of mental illness that you see much. As Hannah over at colouredmind has remarked before, the face of depression usually portrayed seems to be glamourous young girls who look a bit glum, hold their head in their hands, and maybe cry a bit. Where are the skanky, neglected surroundings? The unkempt and matted hair? The constant loss of weight? Even in the blogosphere, noone seems to speak about it much. The only time it comes to attention is on shows like “How Clean Is Your House?”, where I’m fairly sure quite a few of the participants were diagnosably mental (does anyone remember the guy who had an uncontrollable urge to hoard broken bikes? He was STILL hoarding them when they went back three months later to check up on whether he’d managed to keep his house clean and tidy, and looked like he’d fill up the house again in another couple of years if he didn’t get some actual help).
Ironically, it’s also the one area of my life that feel I really need some advice/practical help with, but there just isn’t anyone I could get that from. Surely I can’t be the only one out there who struggles with self-care?
SHM: A Simple Harmonic Muddle 