On smells and me

We have a closet in the basement of Love–our supply closet. It contains all of our chemicals, and our paper goods and trash bags. And it holds our clean cleaning rags. I love that closet, and occasionally dream of spending time inside it. It smells so clean–like sheets just out of the dryer. It makes me feel warm and cozy. I wish I could just sit on the floor and read, in the midst of that comforting smell. No one would knock on that door asking for assistance, no one would bother. I don’t have any projects in there that need to be completed. I don’t feel obligated to organize it or get it clean. Instead, it’s a little room, a refuge. I’ve never actually acted on my dream, but whenever I open the door to get a towel or some extra rolls of toilet paper, I indulge my senses by letting the door close behind me and breathing in the sweet silence, the blessed warmth, the heavenly odor. For just that moment, I’m a little girl again, wrapped in a freshly washed, cozy blanket. And that’s what I love.

To myself I’m surprisingly simple and remarkably complex. I understand my motives perfectly and I can’t for the life of me figure out why I do what I do. I could be simplistic and say that I desire the same things as everyone else–security, love, acceptance, variety within the bounds of comfort. But simplicity also demands that I have my own unique desires. I feel like a paradox to myself, which is perhaps why I so hate to be put in a box by others. And perhaps that’s why I desire so much to find a box that fits me. We laud dynamic characters in fiction, but my own complexity makes me want to be flatter. At least then I could be certain who I was. I could be “the shrew”, “the ingenue”, “the bombshell”, “the flirt”, “the femme fatale”, “the cowering miss”, “the wallflower.” Instead I am none and all. I hate and love, I am carefree and somberly involved. I am melancholy and joyful. I am organized and I am messy. I cannot identify myself, so I continue to search, to answer that great question-“Who am I?”

There’s something wrong with checking facebook at 3:21 on a Sunday morning. There’s something even more wrong with seeing that you’re not the only who’s doing it. It’s easy to become addicted. It’s easy to develop horrible sleep habits. This is how school messes you up. Either studying or partying keeps you up late, and then when you want to sleep you can’t. That’s where facebook comes in. It’s a time waster when you know you can’t sleep. It’s foolish but quitting seems impossible.

My bedroom smells like vinegar for some reason. Or maybe that’s the 409 I used to clean the microwave. One way or another, it smells funky. I luxuriate in smell. I don’t know why. It’s an odd phenomenon considering that I can hardly smell during most of the year. Allergies and a deviated septum keep my nose clogged. Yet I delight in what I can smell, or else it triggers me to obsessive cleaning. I love onions and I love to cook with them, but I hate how they make my hands smell after I’ve cut them. I smell my hands a lot. Right now they smell like 409–and it’s definitely not the same vinegary smell I’m smelling from the rest of the room. Odd. Maybe I should look into that.