Wednesday, 11 August 2010

$#!+ in the shower...

Started work having to ask for days off to figure out my registration for school, all the while thinking...I am going to be homeless in a little over two weeks and I have burned my last bridge for any other options other than staying in Winnipeg for the time being...I am wondering if I will get into classes. how things are going to get worked out. In a state of anxiety, looking for the nearest table to hide under.

and then I started work...

my brain could not get out of panic 'my-life-is-a-black-hole-of-i-don't-know-ness' and i am expected to calmly clean and prepare rooms for inspection...I fought for my favorite job, I won. We cleaned the kitchen floor, for some reason this calms me...the repetitive motion of sweeping and moping kept the panic at bay...

then we did laundry for a few hours just to gain a little more perspective...

I really thought I was handling things well, I was trying not to be emotionally deranged and give in to the selfish desire to curl up, cry, stomp, scream it out girl.

And then I started the bathrooms. The kids trooped in early and although i never usually talk to any of the guests here I asked them if it would be okay if I cleaned the bathroom...they gave me a horrified look and told me that I didn't need to do it. They told me their counsellors would make them clean it up...I shook my head and calmly told them, "No, I am the cleaning lady, I clean bathrooms...is it okay if you use the other washrooms while I clean this one?"
Once again I was given looks of shock and shame..."You don't want to clean the middle one. We are being punished for what happened."
I am totally clueless...
Then the story gets ugly...someone put poop in the shower, deliberately placing it on a ledge and the whole basketball camp is being punished cause no one is fessing up.
I laugh. Really...poop?...in the shower?
I look. Sure enough. poop. in the shower.
I cleaned. I didn't really mind that much. Poop is poop, whether in a toilet or on the floor or in the shower...but then I started thinking about whoever did it. To the motivation or reasoning behind that kind of prank. That's when everything started falling apart...my handhold grasp on peace turned into a jackknife dive off the precipice of emotional stability...I thought about a kid who's wasting their life pooping in someone else's shower and for some reason it just ripped my heart out. What makes a kid try that hard to capture attention. Or is it just a kid who is losing the line between funny and grotesque...or the ridiculous and the debased...it seemed funny in the kids head, just the whole working out didn't turn out so good...

I kept thinking about that kid...

thinking, turned into freaking out, turned into crying, turned into thinking, turned into singing, turned into euphoria (endorphins from crying), turned into thinking, turned into some more singing, turned into mellow, turned into a blob....

but there is still a kid...

poor kid...

i wish i could tell that kid...don't waste your life planning how to shock people with your shit...even if it is shock worthy...as much as it's the crazy everyone grow ears to hear or stare at, in the end it's just a gong show that some crazy emotionally deranged person gets paid to clean up...it's just furtive looks and endless questioning that only goes as far as the nearest garbage can...it will never make you feel any better because of it.

2 comments:

Ben said...

I chuckled an obscene amount during this post. I loved reading it! You forgot to mention all the hypothetical situations like a sick girl in the shower who was too ashamed to take it to the toilet. That's always a reality......

Waiting for my essay!

Stefanie said...

That last paragraph just floored me Maria. Your wording was masterful - made sense in relevance to the story, but also in a more general sense. Who but you would be able to delve into a "poop in the shower" story so brilliantly and find in its meaning an allegory for life?
Also, I didn't realize just how much of an emotionally stressful day yesterday was for you! No fun! Hope today's been a better day:)