Mission: Home

If,

“A cluttered rooms yields a cluttered mind.”

Then,

“A cluttered house yields a…

dot, dot, dot. I’m open to suggestions on how to finish that.

It’s hard for me to adjust to home, everytime I come home. I go from being ‘oh so independent’ in Austin, to pretty much the opposite at home.

You may laugh, but when I go home I got to do stuff like…

• Tell people where I’m going every second
• Household chores [not no little stuff... I'm talking about cleaning attic and painting walls]
• Sneak back into the house after I go out so I don’t wake anyone up.
• Etc., etc.

…And I’m cool with that. I expect that when I go home. But lately, it’s all been catching up with me.

On one hand – I want my own place. I want to be independent. I want to answer to myself for the most part. I want a full size bed. No alarm to turn off when I get in at 2:30AM. 

On the other hand- I want to be apart of their daily lives. I want to play Wii with my lil’ brother. I want to wake up on Saturdays and be apart of family breakfast. I want to ride to church in one car.

If I moved out.. I’d loose all that.

Now you might say, “Justin, It’s time for you to grow up and move out.” And you’d have a point. I’m 22, with a good enough job to handle that…but I’m not ready.

I’m not ready because I still believe that I have an obligation to my house.

So…Let’s get to the present issue. For those of you who may not have knew, my parents live in two different households. Each with two sets of demands for me [whether it be chores, errands, babysitting, etc.]. And when I come home from school, there is usually a laundry list of things that I’m expected to get done. And I do it. Then there are those things that just need to get done, i.e. cleaning, painting, throwing away of, etc.. And it’s little issues such as these that spark up drama in my household.

I know it sounds silly for these issues to stir tension, but they do.  

“a messy house yields a messy house” [pun intended]

[I just thought that up... man, I'm good]

People begin to complain and judge, “who’s going to do it?”, “when is it going to get done?”, “you must not care about it if you don’t do it.”, “nobody cares about me cause this ain’t getting done”

Sure, things aren’t said exactly like that, but that’s the idea. And from just typing it out, I’m a bit embarrassed to share that with you all. But that’s just how it is. Fighting that element would just yield more drama.

So… What I have been doing lately is working my ass off. I’ve been trying to tend to everyone’s needs to make them happy. I’ve been trying to balance both households [friends of divorced household probably can relate]. I’m been trying to paint the walls at my mom’s, clean my dad’s attic, be a good big brother to my siblings, not step on the toes on any of the women of my family….and on top all that, still be an active, outgoing young adult. It seems that from trying to take the stress from everyone else, thai I’m just placing it on myself.

And I’m tired. So tired… but I don’t want to give any of it up. Because it all matters.

I wake up at 6:00AM every morning to go work out before work. I get home at 4:30PM. Those few hours before I go to bed every day just aren’t enough to do it all. I have two households to maintain and entertain.

And I don’t want to grow up and live on my own yet. “Why?”, because my home isn’t at peace yet. If I could trust that things would be ok, I’d feel better about leaving. Keep in mind, that it’s still likely that I would get a full-time offer in Wyoming, New Mexico, or Alaska [exciting places, right?]. One would think this would be my last time at home, but my Dad’s brought up the option of me staying at home to save money if I’m hired in Houston. But my greastest desire when I’m at home is to have “peace”. I would trade in our Wii, our new wood floors, our painted walls, our landscaping, a clean attic…..for peace.

And I feel that it’s my mission to help my family achieve peace. And even once I finnally decide to go, that’ll still be the case. I see myself fixing my mama’s house and helping my dad w/ his task.

Such is the life of a son.

~ by justinfication on July 8, 2008.