Mess

     You can always tell how much of a mess I am by how clean my room is. When the feelings become too much, I find myself tidying, getting rid of that old thing and placing that thing I like in just the right place.

     One weekend I was feeling so low that I cleaned every inch of the apartment. Not checking my phone once, I woke up to a general sense of dread and quickly began working my way through the stack of old New York Times on my chair. Once all was in the recycling bin, I decided to clean off my desk, which turned into the floors, the countertop, the stove, the toilet, the bathroom floor, the bureau, the fridge, the dish rack, the cabinets, the television stand, the windows, and the top and bottom shelf of the end table which both have nothing on them because I have already gotten rid of everything that doesn’t spark joy.

     Every time I completed a task, I spotted the next one in grateful anticipation. “Oh, I could do that, too.”

     Every new surface was an opportunity to bring order to my external world, an aspiration that felt irreconcilable in my inner world.

     On the walk back from the gym that evening, I noticed trash on the sidewalk like I never did before.

     A styrofoam cup printed with cheaply designed graphics of steaming coffee mugs was stuck squarely atop a fence post, pierced through its bottom like the Dixie cups seen at vigils on long white candle sticks.

     I picked it up with the tips of my fingers placed gingerly on its edges. Upon seeing an old coupon flyer floating on the sidewalk, I noticed my urge to swipe it up as well. I was out of control.

     “This is not my job,” I said aloud.

     I turned, pacing slowly back to return the cup to its place atop the fence.

     When I walked by the next day, it was gone.