Here In My Room...

I've been back in London for a week and a half and my room still isn't tidied. The mess I left behind when I returned home for my Christmas break is still collecting dust. Every day I pick up a shirt, organize a surface, shuffle the items in a corner, but the mess remains. Groups of student have already started touring the house for next year. As our house battles the rental company due to its early and unlawful disruption of our lives, we keep our fingers crossed that a group will choose our house ASAP and I know having a clean house will help. I also know a clean room will help me get through this final semester. But the more time I spend in here, the more I resent it. How did I end up living in my bedroom?

When I was permanently living at my parents house, I rarely spent much time in my bedroom outside of the necessary sleeping and dressing. While I value my alone time, I get bored very quickly back at home and prefer to do my work in the company of my stay-at-home mom. I think we both prefer to have someone to chat with as we go about our daily tasks, and we've always been close. Then I moved into residence for my first year of university where my bedroom was my room and 'alone time' was a scarce but generally unwanted commodity. But since moving into my off-campus house (which I have lived in since moving out of res), I go through phases where I live in my bedroom.

I do work, eat, and sleep in here. Had I known I would be spending so much time here I might have decided against painting my walls Commie-red. As I become more restless here and more anxious to finish the year, I find more to dislike about my bedroom--my voluntary prison:

- the closet is way too small (I have a lot of clothes...and shoes...)

- three of the four drawers in my dresser are broken

- my bed is about one foot too high

- one window = adequate lighting for only a few hours

- the carpet is old

- my desk is small and lacking drawers (why do desks not have drawers anymore?!)

- my bookcase is overflowing with books, DVDs, and CDs and is threatening to collapse any day now

And the list continues. This semester needs to end, if only to liberate me from my student housing bedroom life. There are only 83 days until my last day of class. Will my bedroom and I survive? Tune in tomorrow for an exciting vacuuming episode.