Lately I've found myself doing things that are too easy. By "too easy" I mean that I've been letting myself get away with a lot of stuff. By "stuff" I mean: a dirty apartment, mediocre grades and undefined relationships. I've even set this column up so that it has a three-point thesis. Too easy.
It is easy to live in squalor. For the past few weeks, whenever anyone has entered my apartment, I cough into my hand, "yeah, we were robbed." They laugh uneasily. I pat them on the back and reassure them that, yes, I was kidding. I also become very serious and beg them to refer me to a cleaning service.
Washing dishes and picking up clothes are not difficult tasks. In fact, if you wash a dish and pick up a shirt every time you use it, the sink remains empty and the floor remains visible. I never have picked up after myself. I let things be. If a book falls onto the floor I let it sit there. If Frosted Flakes crumble into my sheets I sleep around them. I'm going to take these little things and make them mean something big and significant. This metaphor will come all too easily.
I let my apartment remain messy because it, like all other aspects of my life, is easier to deal with if left untouched. If I acknowledge my mess, then I will have to clean up my mess, and then I will no longer have an excuse. I will see my white walls and my opened boxes and realize that I haven't done the difficult thing: make myself a home.
I have been behind in my readings for all four - count them, four - of my classes since the beginning of this semester. I almost cried with joy when I received an A-minus on a paper I wrote in an hour before sprinting off to a frat party. That A-minus looked a lot better than the Bs and Cs that stained the papers and exams I'd been receiving for weeks. It is easy to not read about the Peloponnesian War. It is easy to SparkNote ecclesiastical figures in the "Divine Comedy." It is easy to read the first paragraph of a novel and send in a lengthy analytical paragraph explaining why a single sentence represents the themes throughout the book.
It is easy to look at books and online readings and paper assignments and leave them untouched. If I don't read or analyze thoroughly then I will not have to face the fact that I do not know what I am reading or analyzing. I will not have to do the difficult thing: make myself a student.
Why do I let myself get away with this? Why do I let myself sit in a dirt-lined bathtub while hanging my hand over the side, frantically clicking at my laptop, hoping that someone on Wikipedia wrote about Clausewitz? Don't worry, the conclusion's coming. I still have my third point.
This weekend I went to dinner with a male figure in my life and his parents. I crossed my fingers behind my back and swore to him that I wouldn't write about the event. But ignoring it would be too easy, and I'm sort of trying to work out that issue right now.
This unspecified male, our ambiguous relationship, his confused parents - all spontaneously combusted into the most frightening words either one of us had heard in a long time: boyfriend and girlfriend. His father dropped the words, then his mother, and the boy who shall not be named sat beside me, squirming as if someone had poured his meal into his lap. He finally exclaimed: "Why do you keep saying that?" His parents laughed and I blushed. Why did they keep saying that?
I have yet to define that relationship with a guy in college. I leave it untouched. We hang out, we have fun, we don't talk about it. That would be difficult. That would require words that meant more than "let's hang out later." That would be cleaning my apartment and forcing myself to take stock of my white walls hiding behind my piles of clothes. That would be cracking open the books I spent hundreds of dollars on yet kick underneath my bed next to my mediocre papers. If I do not define the relationships in my life then I do not have to do the difficult thing: make myself care about anyone other than myself.
It is easy to close your eyes and squeeze them tight, ignoring the tangible things around you in hopes that they will not manifest into intangible but oh-so-present feelings. I can continue to close my eyes and ignore my dirty apartment, the emptiness. I can ignore my books, the inadequacy. I can ignore the relationships, the potential for heartbreak and other types of abandonment and or loss.
Or I can stay up until 4 a.m. cleaning my apartment. I did this last night and it was not easy. I wanted to crawl under my covers, with my Frosted Flake crumbs. But I decided to do something difficult. I looked at my white walls and planned where I could put photos or pictures or anything at all. Things can be good without being easy. The hardest things of all can feel better than sleeping with cereal remnants. This is my conclusion, and reaching it has not been easy.
Connelly's column run weekly Thursdays. She can be reached at c.hardaway@cavalierdaily.com.
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