Shirts, shoes, books, and trash litter the floor, covering the cold tile underneath. Sheets are thrown all over the bed and there are clothes scattered on the furniture leaving me to wonder whether they are clean or dirty. I begin to pick up the trash and books with hopes of making the room a little more organized. “How can one person create such a mess?” I think to myself multiple times a day. I typically give up on cleaning the mess after an hour and usually, she walks in the room with wide eyes as she stares at the semi-clean floor. She immediately apologizes for creating such a mess and tells me that I didn’t have to clean it up and how she feels terrible about it. I always look at her with a smile and assure her that it is perfectly fine and I actually don't mind cleaning the mess. I sometimes find comfort in cleaning and I think that her untidiness is actually quite beneficial to me in my times of stress. She truly is one if the messiest people that I have come to know and on some days I want to rip my hair out because of the disaster before my eyes but I know that she never intentionally means to create such a mess.

I mean, of course not being able to see the floor can stress one out but sometimes it is just something that can’t be controlled. I know that she has a busy schedule and during the day things can get thrown around while she rushes to get to class, I know that I do the same thing on some days. At first, the mess was unsettling and I constantly wondered how I was going to be able to handle it throughout the semester but just by talking to her and understanding the problem helped me relax about the situation. I know that she tries her best to keep the room clean and on a few good days she goes into this crazy cleaning mode, which I quite enjoy. Unfortunately, after the room becomes this sparkling jewel of cleanliness it is not long before it reverts back into the dumpsite that it so often is. However, as the great Ryan Reynolds would say "you have to let go of this idea that you can be precious about everything and let it be the abstract mess that it is."

Living with a messy roommate definitely is not easy but it is also not something that I can’t handle. Despite the insane mess that occurs daily, she really is one of my best friends and a roommate that I wouldn’t mind having for the rest of college or even after that. Thank you, my messy roommate, for giving me the valuable skill of accepting a mess and being one of the best roommates I could have asked for.