Part I.

Pieces of me have been torn out.

You can see them strewn across my apartment: They litter the living room floor, clutter the kitchen sink and barricade the bedroom door. They cut like glass beneath bare feet and clog drains with films of mold. I cannot sweep them up and throw away the broken bits; I lack the strength to swing a broom that long, and the mold . . . is just. So. Disgusting. I can't stand to touch it. And so it sits, accumulating.

Festering.

I know the longer I let it pile up, the harder it will be to eradicate, the longer it will take. To think of it exhausts me. Anyway; I cling to this disarray, connected spiritually to the mess I amass around myself. It's an extension of me, an external representation of the disorder on the inside that I carry with me to work, to the pharmacy, to the grocery store . . . You see, I'm afraid to clean it —

Who will know me then?

How else could I express that I'm grieving, wreck that I am, if not by dirtying my space in my own image?

And what if cleaning it all up doesn't put me back together?

Part II.

I am torn between two camps: Camp Let-Mom-Ask and Camp Affect-Function. Let me clarify:

On Sunday I began the arduous, torturous task of cleaning up my apartment, despite my reluctance to let go of that comfortable, familiar haphazardness. I have begun to clean because my parents are coming to visit.

My parents do not know that I am a mess. I have not told them, and I don't think that I can. So I'm cleaning. Wiping down and folding away all evidence of my inner chaos, for their sake. For mine too.

On Sunday, I washed my dishes. It took me four hours, but I scrubbed the sink, scrubbed the counter, and scrubbed every dish I own that had been dirty for at least a month if not longer. Halfway through, I thought: Maybe I should let mom and dad see how I live. How I function-not-function. Let them wonder how I'm doing. Let them ask. Give them the tools with which to pry open my isolation, and then decide at that point in time whether to let them in or continue to shield them, to shut them out.

Yet I cleaned. On Monday I took out four bags of trash. I mopped the floor underneath where those bags had been sitting, leaking something sticky. I put clean laundry in the drawers and soiled laundry in the hamper. I don't want them to ask. I don't want them to know. I don't want them to share my grief. I don't want to make my mother cry. I cannot sabotage that outward appearance I have worked so hard in the last year to create for family and friends and co-workers and strangers.

I wish I could, though.