Cleaning Someone’s Home and It’s Reminder of Mental Health
Photo credit: Unsplash: Sidekix Media
I’m 14, in Foster Care and making money was my ultimate goal.
I was cleaning someone’s home who was a staple customer at a cafe I worked at. My boss shared I was looking for odd jobs to make some extra cash while in high school. He gave me the heebie-jeebies because he had this off putting character about him and if I’m being honest he was not very clean and used his tongue to clean his plate at the cafe and he didn’t talk much.
Again odd. & uhhhh
— ew.
I gracefully accepted the job because CASH. (& people pleasing tendencies)
I thought it would just be tidying up his home but it was that and worse.
He needed his appliances cleaned. I’m talking microwave, oven, fridge, freezer. The works and it wasn’t pretty.
Crusted food everywhere.
And I saw many bugs come and go.
I thought the stove top was a tan color except underneath it was actually white.
Like years, YEARS, of built up.
I felt proud when it sparkled clean tho.
I hope that day of bringing him a clean space brought him joy and peace. That he didn’t have to worry.
I reflect back with distaste for how dirty it makes me feel just thinking about it but I also think to myself: it’s kind of a message for our life and a clear example of what depression and loneliness can look like.
Now 30 years old and facing periods of dark depressions of my own, I see this clearly.
When we get low, we don’t always take care of ourselves.
When life feels heavy, we want to be a sloth.
Sometimes cleaning helps us but some days it’s the last thing we want to do.
We feel bad so our environment takes shape that way too.
At least for some. Sometimes we put on the masks of perfect homes that sparkle, hiding in the armor of our feelings and self-protection.
But for some it’s tough to manage the day to day tasks.
I look back and wonder so much: if he was suffering terribly, if he was lonely, if he ever considered therapeutic support or felt deeply this stereotypical ideology that men don’t talk about their feelings.
While his appliances were still working, the buildup of gunk possibly continued a feedback loop of anxiousness. Maybe he was depressed maybe he wasn’t, maybe we have to remember everyone has different perspectives of what clean is (though if you have bugs — it’s a problem.)
But when it comes to our brain, our bodies, our energy, our homes — we must break apart the gunk and find the root or we will stay stuck in that gunk.
Sure, just like his appliances continued to work, we will still breathe, we will still live, but to live fully means sitting with our shit too and what it is to be human.
It means recognizing our pain and suffering, our patterns, our outburst, or why we don’t feel good. It means breaking the cycle of pain and suffering by meeting it with a conversation, understanding and compassion.
We cannot continue letting years pass us by because of the fear of facing our trauma. I know it’s painful, but is it not more painful to not fully live and continue living in our suffering?
Some would argue, but isn’t looking at or working on our trauma living in that suffering?
No. Because there is intention behind the work. There is an inner knowing that If one work to heal, you may never feel good in your own skin. You may lose your partner, or the perfect job, or be the angry parent causing emotional harm to those around you. Maybe even not be the best parent, sibling, partner. When we heal we expand, we evolve to being better people for ourselves and other people.
Unresolved issues overcome you and how you operate in the world. It keeps you gripped to it’s chains and it can become the scapegoat, the excuse to never change. Yes, it’s painful, but never untying the knot, will keep you coiled.
Just like we sharpen our skills for an interview or a job, we have to look at our trauma and work on the things that hold us back in life.
We must take our mental health just as seriously as we clean the kitchen after cooking and making a mess.
We must take our physical health just as seriously as we drive to the nearest fast food drive through.
We must take our emotional health just as seriously as we sit in front of a TV and sob over a story that resembles our own but you’ve never taken a true moment to ask yourself the deeper questions of how it’s actually affecting you today or shaping how you live.
Our bad habits glue to other bad habits and before we know it, everything is built up, and all that energy is pent up.
We notice this when our bodies have continued to cry out for help by manifesting into physical symptoms. We may feel tired all the time or get sick a lot.
We may shout at our partner or be quick to anger.
What we resist will always persist and we have to tune in to the why’s behind our actions.
This is cleansing to our system too.
Don’t be the person that never gives their mental health attention.
So just like our necessary cleaning to our appliances so they run properly, don’t forget to clean up the mess that may be going on in your head. Reflect. Cleanse your gut. Get your yearly medical check ups. Talk out your frustration and sadness with a close one, seek professional health with therapy or hire a trauma informed healing coach. Reframe the limiting beliefs that may be holding you back in life. Ask the deeper questions about why you behave the way you do. Tune into the anger, anxiousness, worries, sadness, joy even — a message may just be waiting for you.
You deserve to feel clean too.
Thank you for reading,
-Kellie Becker, MSW, Trauma Survivor and Advocate
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