My Current View - Dirty Counters

Not every view is beautiful. Not every view is captivating. Not every view is life changing. But social media has us believing that other people’s lives are far better than the ones we live. And I’m sure our social media friends have wonderful moments, like the rest of us. But we all have moments like the moment in the picture. It’s a Monday. The Monday after my birthday. Another year older, and still feeling unfulfilled. I wonder what 15 year old me would think of this life I’m living. I wonder what she would think of this view. I’m sitting here staring at dirty dishes while I drink day old cold coffee because I’m too uninspired to make a fresh pot. It happens like that sometimes. Scroll in and look at all those dirty dishes. The dirty counters. The junk sitting everywhere. If you look closely, you may find muddy paw prints because I have a dog tall enough to stand up and scope the counters for leftover food. Some days, I wash every dish I use. I am on top of my game. My house is clean and smells like fresh baked cookies. Some days I craft. I watch YouTube videos and make Santa Clause gnomes out of junk I find at the Dollar Tree. Some days, I make homemade biscotti and invite girlfriends over for brunch. But some days my dishes are dirty and my house smells like wet dog and dirty laundry. Some days, all I do is get out of bed. I eat cereal out of the box and crash on the couch, falling asleep to daytime television. I wake up at some point in the afternoon and pillage around for something halfway nutritious. I make a pb&j and then go back to sleep. If we’re honest with each other, we all have days that we aren't at our finest. Sometimes, we have entire weeks that all we do is hide and heal. We are too ashamed to admit it publicly, because we feel like a failure. We feel like the only people alive who don't shower daily. Let me help you......you are not the only person who didn’t shower today. You are not the only person with dirty dishes. You are not the only person who turned your phone on silent and didn’t answer the knock at your door. Mrs. E recently messaged me and told me that her husband of 27 years asked for a divorce. She said she doesn’t know what she did wrong. She raised three good kids. She did his laundry. She cooked his supper. She got up early and packed his lunch for work. She attended PTA meetings and ballgames and boring work parties. She kept the house clean. She said that since the divorce she was having trouble getting out of bed and had no interest in anything or anyone. She said that she only answered the phone for her children. She hasn’t seen her friends in months.... said she just can’t face them. She said she’s binge watching The Crown on Netflix. She told me that she had a hoodie that she used to wear regularly. The front of the hoodie read “Life is Beautiful.” Mrs. E confessed to me that she lit a fire in her fireplace and burned that hoodie. And you know what Mrs. E? That’s ok. It’s ok to feel sad. It’s ok to be angry. It’s ok to feel lost and overwhelmed. It’s ok to occasionally burn hoodies or pictures of your cheating ex. It’s ok to have days that all you do is get out of bed. You will find yourself again. Healing takes time and every person reading this is rooting for you. Last week I had a discussion with a young man at a local flea market. He said there was no point in life. There was no point in trying. He said he was tired down to his bones. He said he got a good job so he could get a house and a car. He wanted his parents to be proud of him. He said he feels trapped now, working a job he hates to pay for the house and the car that he was able to get because of the job he now hates. He expressed little to no interest in living any longer. He said that he didn’t think anyone would notice if he wasn’t around. He said if life was just working and sleeping, he would rather be dead. I didn’t give him any life changing advice. I just listened. I made eye contact and asked questions about him. Not questions about his job. Not questions about his house. I asked him about him. His favorite color. His favorite food. His favorite kind of music and favorite vacation spot. I saw the light in his eyes grow brighter as he opened up and talked about himself. The point is life is not all rainbows and unicorns. I wish that it were. I wish that for all of us. Life is hard. It’s messy and unpredictable. Somedays, life is beautiful. Somedays, it is not. Actually, I’ve lived thru a couple really ugly days in my time on this planet. I bet you have too. But we don’t want each other to know that we have lived thru ugly days. We don’t want people to know what we look like at 3am. We don’t want people to know that we have a sink full of dirty dishes. We don’t want people to know that our bank accounts are in the negative, or that we binge eat entire boxes of Little Debbie cakes. Behind our perfect social media persona, we all live real lives. We all mess up. We are all a bit lazy. We are all a bit undone. My challenge to all of us is this…. Live life without a filter. Make genuine connections. Have authentic conversations. Life is a journey, and we are all heading the same way. In the words of my favorite news anchor turned trash tv talk show host, “Take care of yourselves and each other.”

#kitchen #messy #countertops #reallife