Trash

No matter how often I clean my room, I can never seen to get rid of all the junk.

Today's trash bag tally: three. THREE trash bags. People think I'm joking when I say that my stuff spontaneously clones itself when I leave the room. Well, I don't see me laughing when I have to shove those three stupid-heavy trash bags into the garbage cans that for whatever reason are always wedged thisclose to my mom's CRV. Cirque de Soleil applauds my acrobatic bag-shoving abilities.

Struggle aside, the results are always well worth it. My room feels lighter. Less burdened. Like if there was an air-raid I could throw my entire room into two suitcases and be in the bunker watching Gilmore Girls before the rest of my family even heard the siren.

(Mental note: get a bunker.)

That's how I like it. Simple. No muss, no fuss, all the gain without the pain. But this cleaning time, oh, this cleaning time was different. Drastic. Nay, demented. A no-holds-bar purging of everything that even hinted at unnecessary, useless, or good-god-I-bought-that-in-1997. There is absolutely nothing left in my room that isn't entirely needed.

(Okay, that's a lie. I kept my Declaration of Independence shot glass and this funny little mini-fork I got at a rehearsal dinner. It reminded me of a tiny version of the trident in The Little Mermaid.)

I've tried to pinpoint what brings on these desperate needs to clean. Some kind of hormonal nesting urge? One too many episodes of Hoarders? Whatever the reason, the feeling afterward is always the same. Sitting at my desk, looking around my room, twiddling my thumbs. Thinking, "All right. It's time."

But -- time for what?

I feel like something has to happen now. I've cleaned out all this space for Something to come; it'd be downright rude of it not to take the hint and swoop in, right?

I'll be 21 in two days. A college graduate in 3 months. I think the Something that's coming is -- well, lets just say that Something has to happen, because the only alternative at this point in my life is a big, dark vortex of Nothing that doesn't usually come until you're yelling at nurses for stealing your denture paste.

People usually have an idea of what Something is, don't they? At this point in the game, they at least have a slight illusion of Something. "Oh hey, look, there's that rascal Something; see his silhouette in the door there?"

Nope. Not me. No silhouette. Not anymore. I just know that wherever my Something is, I don't want to go chasing after it with three trash bags of my past weighing me down.

That bunker might be kind of nice right about now, actually.