Why I Love My Mother: Essays on Responsibility and Growing the F**k Up

Living with other people is a difficult situation. Living with people you don't know can be either a lot better or a lot worse. Sometimes, as was the case with my freshman undergrad roommate and me, one feels a responsibility to be polite to people that one doesn't know, and to try to be respectful of shared space and shared things. Sometimes, as is the case with my roommates now, one disregards completely the feelings of others, because one doesn't know them and therefore does not care. We've all heard the adage that as we grow older our parents grow smarter, and yeah, okay, it's true. MOM IF YOU'RE READING THIS I'M TOTALLY NOT ADMITTING THAT.

Do you remember when you were a kid, and your Mom would have to beg you not to do basic things, such as: wipe up crumbs from the counter, not leave your dishes lying everywhere, feed/walk your nondescript pet, pee before you leave the house, not pick your nose, etc. But you grow up. You learn not to do those things. And do you know when that is, for most of us? For most of us, it's when we go to college and refuse to live in filth and degradation and sin (sin here of course meaning DIRT). There are some people who have not yet learned that lesson. Those are the people I live with. And that is teaching me why I should love my mother.

Over break, I worked so hard to keep the common space of this apartment clean. I worked really hard at that, but not too hard because I was the only one living here. When I came home, everything was exactly as I'd left it. Things were just as clean as I expected them to be. It was wonderful and I was happy. Now, I live with people who mess up my clean space. They walk with their dirty shoes on the floors I clean. They leave their dirty dishes in the sink for days. They refuse to put the garbage out. THEIR garbage and THEIR filth interfere with my life because they refuse to take responsibility for the mess that they leave in their wake. And what is their excuse? "It doesn't feel like home unless I can throw my shit everywhere." Really? Is that REALLY what you're going to say to me? Because frankly, I don't give a flying f**k what makes you feel at goddamn home if what that means is you leaving food to rot in the house and making our apartment smell like a dump. Have some f**king self respect and put your goddamn dishes in the dishwasher. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO WASH THEM. JUST PUT THEM IN THERE.

All the anger I clearly have toward the people I live with is what brought me to think about Mom. When I was a kid, it really did seem like a big deal to walk the three feet to the washer to put the dishes inside. It seemed like a huge inconvenience to wipe the crumbs off the counter, or to vacuum when it was my turn. But Mom, no matter how angry or frustrated she might have been, she did not yell and scream at me every day. She did not cut off my head with a chainsaw or feed my feet to angry dogs. She didn't even try to murder me in my sleep. Then, and still to this day, she sighs and does the dishes and sends the garbage out and wipes down tables and counters every morning, because that's what moms do. That's what she did for us every day. And you know, it takes the shittiest people in the world to make you realize you have something great. I love you Mom.