Recently, a neighborhood friend stopped by to give me a gift. She wanted to see my home (as we're one of the newer additions to our 'hood, and she'd never been in our house), and I was happy to oblige. That is, until I looked around and panic set in. Not because I was worried about her judgement of me or my cleaning (or lack thereof) but because I was upset over MY judgement of myself.
We've had recent conversations with our children about mental illness and how to recognize depression in friends and family and things you can do to help. But what about anxiety that manifests, not due to a disorder or larger mental illness classification but through learned experiences and life-event shaping? I have anxiety. Not over everything...but my home being spic & span is one thing that actually keeps me up at night. Obsessing. Judging myself and demeaning my ability to care for my family.
I was raised by an extremely religious mother who loved to state, "cleanliness is next to Godliness!" And then proceeded to clean our house with a toothbrush and bleach. And deep down inside I know this is the manic flight of someone who is bi-polar, and not a standard by which 'normal' ppl should live their lives; none-the-less it's the type of clean I hold myself up to.
As the friend lovingly reassured me that my home was "just fine and not messy," all I could do was look around in shame at the surfaces that I had neglected to scrub that week. Not shame that someone else had seen my untidy home, but deep ingrained ignominy that I couldn't eat off of any surface I walked past. I could hear my mother chiding, "We don't have much, so there is absolutely no excuse in life for it not to be its absolute best at all times. You must care for everything you have to the best of your ability..." as she scrubbed away at our possessions.
As a mother of three children (four if you count my adorable man-child), who are all incredibly active between music and sports and academics; I'm on the go 24/7. And I shouldn't care if there's a few tumbleweeds of dog hair floating around as long as things are put in their place at the end of the night; and yet...I do. I've become pretty good at ignoring those niggling remembrances of unrealistic childhood expectations, but sometimes they get the best of me.
So, I apologized. In every room. On every floor. Not because I was sorry that she was bearing witness to my picked-up-yet-dirty-in-my-eyes home, but because I felt my lack of ability to accomplish everything all at once. I was sorry that I didn't view myself as enough. Which is just plain silly. And 100% contrary because I outright know that most of the time I'm too much. And I can normally shrug it off and laugh about it; but this day, it was overwhelming.
I bided my time until I actually had some free and then gave in to that sense of dread. In a little way of course. While Vern, my robot vacuum set about gobbling up dog hair babies around the main floor, I cleaned and scrubbed every surface in our entryway. And while it's not the whole house, it's good enough for now. You could eat off any surface in the space which is the first you come into upon entering. I've made a plan to work on the rest of the rooms (straight down to cleaning the moulding and chair rails) that will appease my asinine compulsion to live up to ridiculous childhood expectations while still allowing me some semblance of daily normalcy.
I guess what I wanted to share is that not every time someone apologizes for the condition of their home that it has anything to do with you; but potentially its more of an internal dialogue that you have no clue about. It could be a glimpse into their own baggage that they carry though life. And take solace in that for the next 17 minutes you could safely dine off of any surface in my entry. I know I am.
