Heaven is a Clean Bathroom

You wanna know what I did yesterday? Well, I’ll tell you: I went home.

Maybe I should back up a little. I went home to a home that I actually looked forward to going home to all day long. Doesn’t sound like that big a deal to most of you, does it? It was a HUGE deal to me, however; because it has been roughly 8 months since I’ve had that feeling.

Since I moved here I had been living in a house that made me feel more physically uncomfortable than any other place I’ve spent more than a couple of nights in. The reasons for my discomfort were many. Relationship issues. Animal issues. Security issues. Issues revolving around my needs for cleanliness and organization. Issues regarding my privacy, my routine, my belongings, and, ultimately, my sanity. I made arrangements to move about a month ago, and the circumstances that founded my reasons for leaving began to escalate at a rapid speed. When I finally moved last week, things were awkward, at best, but I brushed off any residual guilt and got the hell out.

I’ve known for a long time that I needed to live alone, but I didn’t fully anticipate the relief I would feel having finally accomplished it. When I was younger, the idea of living alone was very intimidating to me. I wondered if I’d be afraid. Or lonely. Or that I’d get sick in the middle of the night, puking in the pot, and what would I do with nobody there to call out to? Who would hold my hair back? Who would bring me lemon-lime Gatorade and a straw? But then I thought about it. How often do I really have puking spells? Certainly not often enough to warrant need for a roommate.

I realized that I like knowing that when I go home at night, nobody will be there and things will be exactly as I left them. Unless, of course, Bridget has had a particularly boring day. (After her first day alone EVER last week, I came home to what looked like a poltergeist attack. Every last cabinet and drawer in the kitchen and bathroom were wide open. And when JoBeth Williams started crawling up the wall in her panties, I really knew that something wasn’t right.) I like being able to have guests over at any time and having them stay for as long as I want them to. I like WANTING to invite people over in the first place. I like not having to overhear conversations between people that I have absolutely no interest in overhearing. I like seeing a hair in the bathtub and knowing that it came from my own head. I like putting a $10 bag of chicken in the freezer and knowing that I’ll actually get to eat it at some point. I like sitting on my couch without having to worry that I’ll be wearing a dog fur coat when I get up. I like throwing things in the garbage can and resting in the fact that it won’t be covering the living room floor when I return and I like that when I take that trash out….it’s trash that only I have accumulated. I LOVE walking barefoot in my own home and not having to wash my feet clean immediately afterwards. I like not having ugly, cheesy, foreign made,non-original, dusty, dollar store knickknacks covering every surface. I like being able to look only at pictures of people that I love. I could go on and on. But we all have lives to live.

Celebrate your clean bathrooms, my friends. Be kind to your feet. They’ll thank you for it one day.