my bed doesn’t have a sheet on it. not right now, at least, while i’m writing this. i’d say historically it has one about 60% of the time, and that’s being nice to myself. there is a shake shack bag on the ground to my right and two taco bell bags on the bed to my left. the rest of the room is at worst messy, but certainly no sight to look at. i feel a lot of shame about the condition in which i live. it’s part of the reason i live alone (along with being cosmically lucky enough to be able to). when i go out i lift myself up to the closest approximation of a functioning person i can in the same way one holds in their gut to hide their weight. when i go home i finally let myself breathe again. i’ve been making an effort to fix this for all of the four years since i left my parents’ house and all of the years before that too. to my credit, i have! there may be a couple of empty fast food bags around, but when i was a teenager living with my parents, there’d be rotting food, active wet spots from spills, and a... smell... that you just couldn’t escape. i barely lived day to day. i was depressed. i still am and i always will be. my brain chemicals are disordered such that i’m pretty severely mentally ill, but still high-functioning. i tried to kill myself multiple times. i spent time in the psych ward. i tried medications that didn’t work. i am still depressed and i am still suicidal. these things will never leave me. but... well, there’s no longer biological material on the ground. i take care of myself more. i clean more. i put on my bed sheet more. i cook more. i haven’t tried to kill myself in 4 years. maybe i’m addicted to weed, and even if i beat that i’m sure i’ll stumble my way into a nicotine addiction, but goddamn it i’m alive. my ex before the last slept on a bed with wrappers on it, in a much more disgusting room than the one i have now. one time we even broke the bed and half collapsed in. he slept on the collapsed half. he kept coming over. he still loved me. yes, maybe i have to claw and grip and pry just to make it day to day. but that’s just who i am. and that’s okay. shame is a natural reaction to my conditions, but much bigger is a sense of pride that i’m still here at all. if the worst it gets is a missing bed sheet and a problem with cigarettes, then hallelujah. that's just who i am 12.25.2025 viboof.com