For several years, I’ve been struggling with mental health problems that’s given me a lack of motivation. It may seem simple to an able-bodied person to take a shower that lasts no more than half an hour. But for me, it is pure torture to the point where I don’t finish my showering until THREE HOURS later. I’d be exhausted, my feet would be in all sorts of pain, and I’m cold and miserable. It has become so bad that I ended up showering only once a week. That’s it. I leave my house filthy for three weeks to a month before I start sweeping because again, doing it once a week is torture.
I am often discouraged by my family for leaving my house dirty and having poor hygiene, and they expect me to do better, to do it right, to do it faster, to do it better. Cannot get out of bed until one hour after waking up, struggling to sleep, always exhausted, tried everything from changing the time I go to bed to splitting my work. Nothing helped. The problem was when I split my work by separate days, I don’t feel clean, my house doesn’t feel clean. My mom expects me to wash off every day and have at least two showers per week. She cannot handle that I use one instance of washing off apart from my weekly shower as taking care of my hygiene. Plus I don’t feel the need of over-cleaning myself as it’s too much work. She uses the lack of hygiene as a form of sloth, a claimed one of the seven deadly sins. In reality, my mental illness has kept me from progressing to meet my parents’ standards, and it’s sickening. I feel invalidated every time I hear the same old rubbish from my family. I feel severely depressed because of the way I was raised, I’m expected to be of the norm, to hide my personal problems, to be accepted.
I am often discouraged by my family for leaving my house dirty and having poor hygiene, and they expect me to do better, to do it right, to do it faster, to do it better. Cannot get out of bed until one hour after waking up, struggling to sleep, always exhausted, tried everything from changing the time I go to bed to splitting my work. Nothing helped. The problem was when I split my work by separate days, I don’t feel clean, my house doesn’t feel clean. My mom expects me to wash off every day and have at least two showers per week. She cannot handle that I use one instance of washing off apart from my weekly shower as taking care of my hygiene. Plus I don’t feel the need of over-cleaning myself as it’s too much work. She uses the lack of hygiene as a form of sloth, a claimed one of the seven deadly sins. In reality, my mental illness has kept me from progressing to meet my parents’ standards, and it’s sickening. I feel invalidated every time I hear the same old rubbish from my family. I feel severely depressed because of the way I was raised, I’m expected to be of the norm, to hide my personal problems, to be accepted.
