Sweeping Myself Into a Pile

Lately, I have been getting really tired of cleaning up after myself. Literally, cleaning myself after myself, if that makes any sense. I am constantly shedding so many dead skin cells, clumps of hair, scabs, and goodness knows what else that continually flutters off of my body as I walk, that I feel it is almost impossible to keep up with the sweeping and dusting of the debris I generate all on my own.

Don't scratch my head at the dinner table

As a pet owner, I have been used to animal debris for as long as I can remember. It has been occasionally frustrating, often seemingly more time-consuming than it was worth, and sometimes making me feel like I was living in a world of filth. But overall, I've always found more joy and comfort from my pets than annoyance at the inconvenience of having to clean up after them. I never thought, however, that I would surpass, with such gusto and veracity, their contribution to local detritus.

Then one evening, I was kindly asked not to scratch my head at the dinner table. I had not even realized I was doing it, but the resulting effect was a shower of skin flakes raining down on my dish and lap. Needless to say, this was a bit of a wake-up call. Later, I would notice that I tended to scratch my beard while working at my desk, leaving in front of my keyboard a spreading pile of crystalline debris that had crusted along the skin of my chin. Soon I would find a new chore in clearing my sink drain every few days, as more and more hair found its way down with the water.

Sweeping up the floor

Waking each morning, I would shake my pillow to loosen the remains of whatever had stuck there in the night. Strands of hair ensconced in scabs, crunchy little bits of dreck, all shaken to the floor. Every time I stood up, I would brush my pants off and agitate my shirt, watching whatever had settled there relocate to the floor. Everything ended up on the floor, one way or another.

Obviously, all that refuse was not going to clean itself up and I could not just leave it there. Although I did try, for a few days even, after I realized what I had been doing quite unconsciously. Walking barefoot cinched it, however; next to my bed, it felt like walking on sand. The broom came out of the closet and has hardly left my side since. In some respects, this is a bonus since I have become obsessed with sweeping the floors and I doubt that they have been this consistently clean in years. Now, if I could only stop bleeding on everything.

A reminder to focus on the good

In the end, however, I still need to consider my good fortune in one very special area. No matter how gross I might feel about my own physicality, no matter how my appearance might make me feel about myself, it fades into meaninglessness every night. And I am reminded that these days of flaking skin or oozing lesions are passing, no matter how prominent they may look to me in the mirror, when my tween daughter still leans in, eyes wide open and perhaps seeing more clearly than me, to kiss me goodnight.

Editor’s Note: We are extremely saddened to say that on October 21, 2018, Jeffrey Poehlmann passed away. Jeffrey’s advocacy efforts and writing continue to reach many. He will be deeply missed.