I think I made a breakthrough discovery yesterday about my own student psychology. I realised that, similar to some of my friends and all of my family, there was a direct correlation between how much of my shit I have together and the state of my room. Many of you probably understand where I’m coming from. Most of my time in my room is spent deep in essay crisis while cups of tea in different stages of being drunk, strewn around the room, sit there silently, mocking me. Hobnobs, half-eaten, are used as bookmarks for books that I definitely won’t get to read.
In summary, my room is a mess. On my days of confusion, stress or apathy, my room reflects my mood perfectly, like a strange kind of pathetic fallacy lifted from the pages of a modernist novel. Perhaps it’s intentional. In pockets of free time, especially when it’s a nice day, I will decide to clean my room. It manifests the ultimately unhelpful illusion that I’m on top of things. Then I’ll pace around proudly, purposefully walking with flat feet, enjoying not having to tiptoe around clothing and paper.
This was the way my mind and room operated in tandem for as long as I can remember. Then it all changed. I started sleep walking. It used to be a small family joke, where I’d do nothing of consequence. When I was three or four, I’d be found asleep downstairs with duvet and pillow on the kitchen floor, or in the hall, like some sort of teleporting toddler. This was all very funny. That was until I was in my late teens,and I became the subject of repeated anecdotes told around the dinner table, but I didn’t mind, I’d grown out of it, I no longer was to be found lying facedown on the ironing board, covered in laundry, or in the sitting room, having displaced my cat from the usual moth-eaten sofa.
Then it all started up again. Somehow, my brain decided that in the night I needed to become an intrepid explorer, the Indiana Jones of slumber, seeking new and hilarious places to be found asleep. After a few mishaps, I managed to sort of defeat this trait in me, firstly by locking my door and secondly by placing Lego on the floor. Nothing wakes you up faster. So it died down again. I felt quite triumphant, and, every time I woke up facing the Australian flag above my bed, I felt a sense of victory.
This year, however, it has come back, but in a new and totally frightening way. It resurfaced when, after feeling pretty confused and stressed after a difficult day, my room was far from tidy. Then, in the dead of night I woke up and cleaned it. Meticulously. Shoes in the shoe box, notes in the right sections of the right drawers, clothing folded and put away. When I woke up, I thought I’d been robbed. I jumped out of bed and in my state of delirium burst into my best friend’s room and told him to come and see, coaxing him as if Santa had arrived. Despite the obvious attractions of such an offer, he didn’t appear to be very interested and he rolled over to go back to sleep, ignoring my sleepy nonsense. I, on the other hand, was very confused, and very stressed. And above all of this, the most stressful thing was that my room was the complete opposite of my mental state, tricking me into believing that I was calm and on top of things when I most certainly was not. At first I thought it was my subconscious doing me a favour. My friends couldn’t see why I was complaining – I mean, come on, I woke up with a clean room.
Then in the holidays the opposite happened. In a state of calm and collected Saturday night bliss, I went to bed in the midst of a spotless room. When I awoke, my clothes were all over my floor. What was this madness? My subconscious was definitely waging war, undeniably trying to put me off my guard; it could no longer be said that it was helpful. So I read up on it. I got some probably dubious internet advice. I tried listening to whale sounds and classical music. I debated whether Tai Chi or meditation would help. I attended a mindfulness class. I watched a programme on Channel 4 called Freaky Sleepers, reassuring myself through watching it that yeah, I occasionally go walk-about, but that was probably my inner Australian bursting out; at least I’ve never tried to cook a Full English Breakfast like Trevor from Derbyshire or paint the kitchen purple like Meg from Dorset. Perhaps it was one of these factors, but it hasn’t resurfaced since. Now, my room is a reliable indicator of the level at which my shit is together.
