This is why we can't have nice things

This morning, on the way to my internship, I had to stop in the road to wait for two men in orange vests shovel up raccoon roadkill. Bizarre, to say the least.

Last night I realized that I can't keep things clean.

I mean, I always knew I was a messy person, but I had figured it was because I was lazy, or busy, or unconcerned, or a combination of all three. After asking my father how he thought I was supposed to cart a mattress up to school in my mother's toyota sedan when he had a fully functioning SUV and only receiving variations of the response, "You do nothing all summer and now yah want me tah jump through hoops!" (a.k.a. you didn't clean your room and are thus worthless in my eyes) I slowly, neurotically started to organize my things and think about packing for school.

So I made messy piles of shit into organized piles of shit, tried to throw out things that weren't necessary. I laid down on the nubby soft pink carpet and scanned my room, wondering what else I didn't need. I survive nine months a year without most of it while I'm at school - why was it so hard to get rid of?

But I like having layers, like rings of a thick oak or an onion or a child ready for a snowstorm. It's good to have things to peel away, reminders of your past and what you've become since then. I need physical memories, because there's so many important things that I could easily forget. That, dad, is why my room will never be as spotless as you want it to be. That, dad, is why I stopped trying twenty years ago.