2. I often don't have strong urges to put things back in their place. If my shirt's on the floor, I am like "oh, that's where my shirt is, cool I'm glad to know where it is so I can find it later". Why would I bother to move it to another place?
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3. If I do want things to be clean, it's still hard. Choosing to put a thing away feels a bit like trying to do a fast turn on a big boat. I'm not in the middle of cleaning right now, why would I do a cleaning move? I feel like I have to work up to "do cleaning."
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And often there's just not the energy to do it? Like my mental body is heavy, and cleaning rarely feels like it's worth the effort. Or, it feels like my attention in this is very loose, and just warps to match my environment, doesnt warp environment to match me.
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Sometimes adderall fixes this, which is a crazy thing to experience. On adderall, it feels really easy/minor to do stuff like get out of my chair to throw my burrito wrapper away, like it incurs no mental cost? And that's insane - is that how clean people feel all the time?
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When I do get my house clean, I'm a little better at *keeping* it clean by making sure I pick up everything immediately, but this feels unnatural, effortful, and quickly drops off if my routine is disrupted at all (which it often is by travel or parties).
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Rn my kitchen sink is stinky because I tried to pour bad milk down it and it didn't go down. Experiencing a stinky sink is a better experience for me right now than switching my brain over to a mode where I want to clean the sink. I have so much I'm behind on, why focus on sink?
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This stuff extends to my personal life/work, too. I am behind on emails and taxes and projects and promises. I'm *always* behind on them; when I get an email, the mental effort of responding is often worse than the messiness of not responding. My computer files are a disaster.
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I'm so thankful that sometimes a project catches my attention and then I spend nearly every waking hour thinking about it and working on it. So stuff does get done, but it's in sessions of hyper-obsession. I don't know how to do low-grade, distributed attention!
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It feels like some part of my brain, the part that's supposed to "keep up" with small things, be detail oriented and switch modes often, is just constantly exhausted and lumbering behind everything else mumbling 'sorry, pardon me, sorry'
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Besides the practical problems (have failed projects/missed opportunities cause of it) It's come with a lot of vague background shame. People make fun of messy people, express disgust in comment sections where someone complains about a messy roommate.
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I'm stressed about people entering my living areas; my spaces feel "for me," not for them, because the orientation of items is hyper-customized to my chaotic living, not the template of clean. I have some very clean friends who get actively distressed when they hang out with me.
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(Also extends to things like eating - I hate paying attention to what I eat, managing when to eat food in my fridge, washing pans and moving items around in the correct sequence to do cooking and then putting stuff back and then you have to do it AGAIN?? I *hate* it.)
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(also fwiw I did a sleep test and have mild sleep apnea and low blood oxygen when sleeping; it's possible this is contributing to my bad attention, and I plan on trying a cpap machine to see if it helps)
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This is what I’ve literally always felt, but never could put into words. Thank you.