Yesterday, I got home from Bug’s appointment and my house was a mess. It’s been a mess since the sleepover, and honestly, a bit longer. I find it hard to keep up on housework.
It wasn’t dirty. Dishes are usually done nightly, but it’s not unusual to find baskets of clean but unfolded laundry in my laundry room or an unswept floor.
This week, my house played host to unpacked chewy boxes that had been part of a box fort, kids toys scattered everywhere, and an ungodly amount of pet fur and balls of yarn everywhere. It wasn’t dirty. It wasn’t dangerous, but it was cluttered, and I hate clutter. It’s hard to breathe and feel comfortable when you’re surrounded by mess.
Imagine my delight then when a friend messaged me out of the blue that they were coming by to help me clean. Not because I had said anything, but because they suspected I was probably anxiously trying to handle a mess on my own while balancing kids and community work.
I’m not as strong as I used to be and I don’t have the stamina I did before covid got me, and so things that used to be easy for me take much longer and require more breaks. I find it frustrating and it’s taking far longer to rebuild my conditioning than I’d like. So to have my friends show up and help me tear through my house and get so much done in a couple hours was amazing. I felt so loved and so cared for.
My house feels comfortable again.
Sometimes, when you’re so embedded in the doing part of community you forget that having things done for you is part of it too. You can’t always be either a giver or a taker, you have to be both, and for most of us, one or the other is harder.
There’s a joy in learning to accept both, and I’m grateful I’m learning that, even if I’m taking well into my thirties to figure it out.
And I’m really grateful for friends who love me, and are in turn loved by me.
- Bad Weather And Mutual Aid - December 22, 2022
- Matthew Berdyck - December 2, 2022
- On Grief And Tokenism And Friendship And A Hundred Billion Other Things - November 28, 2022
I’m in the same boat. There’s things I can’t do physically and there’s things I can’t do because of executive dysfunction. I’m so grateful for all the friends who:
1) don’t care when things are messy
2) visit and help me clean
3) help me problem solve
4) body double
One thing that touched me the most was when I had COVID, my school wasn’t very helpful with regard to how to manage things until I recovered. Two of my friends who were passing through the area stopped by and brought me 3 or 4 bags of groceries with simple, easy to prepare foods. Because of their efforts, I didn’t have to leave the house for almost a month.