I feel…guilty. But also…justified.

When I was little, my mom would ask me to clean my room. And most of the time, I would not.

After a while, instead of leaving my room the way it is, my mom would come in it while I was at school or away, and clean it herself. Which feels very intruding and violating now, but back then I think I got used to it after a while. After all, I slept in the same bed as her until I was 12/13ish.

Fast forwards 12/13 years later. I’m 26. I live in an airbnb, and I still generally don’t clean my room very often. However, when I leave an airbnb, just like when I leave a rental, I always deep clean it when I leave. I even have a five star average rating on airbnb, across almost 9 months of renting and most were long-term stays. (I’ve been moving around a lot trying to find a permanent place to live.)

This is how it’s always been – I don’t take care of my room very well, but when I leave it I leave it spotless, as if I was never there, so no one can say anything about it. Growing up, I didn’t have that luxury. My mom always entered my room whenever she wanted to, until I “locked” the door by wrapping a physical therapy band around the handle to prevent her (or my stepdad, less often) from coming in unannounced.

Back to present-day 2021. I’m in an airbnb with a host who is very nervous about keeping her room clean. She offered a couple weeks ago to vacuum my room, but I declined because I like my privacy – but sensing her desperation, I inadvertently told her I would vacuum it myself later. I never did, because again, I don’t, usually, until I move out. (In this case, it’s a month and a half long stay.)

Today I randomly get a text asking me to “please tidy up your room”, or I should consider moving out, and that she would refund me. Out of the fucking blue. And she commented on the “condition” of the room, which makes me feel very violated as if she’d been in here. Even though the “condition” is not permanent, and there’s no trash or food on the ground, only clothes and other belongings that have always existed in the same way wherever I go.

Now, I have known that she would have preferred me to vacuum, but I had no idea it seemed to anger her this much, to the point she’d rather have me not live there anymore.

This, obviously, is extremely triggering for me. Extremely, extremely triggering. It feels like someone is eyeing my surroundings, maybe even looking into my room while I’m gone. It feels like someone could walk into my room at any moment, at a moment’s notice. I feel like I can’t sleep. It’s 1:07 am, I’m hungry because I’ve only eaten once today, there’s another airbnb guest in the other bedroom, and I’m terrified of walking into the kitchen and making noise and doing anything that could make my host think I risked or caused a bad rating or comment from a guest.

Thank God I’m moving out March 2nd.

But I’m moving to the middle of nowhere, three hours east of where I’m at, which is already almost an hour away from the nearest city. And even though it’s a one-bedroom, I worry that I’ll run into similarly uptight people that are dependent upon my living situation, or even worse, a landlord that walks unannounced into my room with no warning.

That’s my worst nightmare. Not being able to control my living environment. Or having someone else control it. Even if it’s – in fact- especially if it’s something I think or know I should be doing.

Tomorrow, after the current guest leaves, I asked to talk to my landlord about it because I don’t want to discuss it over text. But I’m scared.

Officially, I’m not actually leasing through airbnb anymore. We agreed to go under the table, which I did last place I lived and it was great, but we never had any problems. Both were verbal leases, which I know were bad, but maybe I had too much faith.

But this is actually the third time I’ve done a lease this way. And that first time ended really badly…

I found a room via craigslist in Idaho (I was taking a year off before I started college) that was cheap and seemed perfectly fine on the outside. It was a month-to-month rental agreement, no signed lease, and I could play my piano, whereas in the previous space, even with my headphones in, my foot-tapping to the beat could be heard from below.

I originally tell my landlord (actually manager? I never investigated thoroughly enough) that I’m staying through the end of the summer. But fast forward a couple months, and I get tired of full-time work, and want to move back in with my parents for the last couple months before I start school.

She agrees, and everything seems fine – until I move out and she keeps basically all of my deposit, minus $50. Her reasoning was something about the bathroom or other, but I press her further and it boils down to that she didn’t have anyone set up to rent for the next month, so she had to take something. I was furious, and instead of calmly talking it through with her, I blew up at her, threatening to sue. Remember, this was between highschool and college for me, so I was 19 at the time, yelling at an older woman who was barely making it by about the money she took from me. Sure, my anger was justified, but you know…

I could’ve handled it better.

And that’s what I’m going to do tomorrow.

I know that there’s a possibility that not vacuuming, even if I’m not doing anything crazy to the carpet, may somehow make it worse to vacuum later.

Goes and googles (how often should I vacuum)

Aannndd I was wrong – my initial thought was it didn’t really matter how often you vacuumed, but dirt can build up over time. That’s what she’s scared of – the floor (and probably other things she can’t control, even though nothing else is an issue).

That being said, I don’t know how much a month and a half really matters, but even with this new revelation that I could be worsening the carpet…

She didn’t communicate her needs well at all, transitioning from “can I vacuum your room” to “please clean or get out”, with no reasonable clear warning or in-between. In addition, she commented about “the condition” of the room as a whole, which again, was very triggering because it sounded like she’d took a peek and judged the shit out of me. Even though “the [current] condition” was never a part of the original airbnb lease agreement. It’s not like airbnb could sponsor her kicking me out because I keep a box of closed, not-leaking cereal on my bed. Yes, I admit, it’s strange. Maybe a little delinquent. But how messy my room is shouldn’t matter until I move out, period. Even WITH vacuuming.

But even if I’m true (which I am), we are on a verbal lease right now. And that means anything goes, including her calling the cops on me and crying wolf because I won’t leave when she wants me to. So this means I probably have to vacuum to keep everyone happy.

What I’m terrified about is how much she’ll stretch that line, because I have no leverage at this point, especially while I look like a werewolf with acne. The cops in this small town would easily side with her over a young (potentially smelly, I’ve been showering less while I try treading above water in school) guy who may look like the room he’s living in. I really don’t want to be forced to literally re-organize my stuff just so she can be happy and feel secure. It makes me feel overwritten.

What I have to do is….not take anything that I have to do, to survive, to stay in the house, personally. Just because I end up moving some stuff around in my room, doesn’t mean I’ve been living my life disrespecting my environment by not keeping my room looking like a doll house all the time.

And that is so fucking hard to do.

But I also…I think her comments about the “condition” of my room were backhanded more than anything and a reflection of her anger for me not vacuuming, since that’s the only thing she wanted me to do other than washing sheets (which I did do). I think this is just built-up around this, and possibly other things that she hasn’t had the patience to communicate yet.

I am scared. I am scared for giving her space to tear me apart. I would feel teared apart if she started talking about how I’m always late to bring my dishes out, or how she rinses them off before I get to the sink later in the day, or how she heard me the other night turning on the microwave late at night.

But these are all things she didn’t tell me, all things I’ve never heard her day. All assumptions built into what I read as anger through her text.

All I can do tomorrow is calmly listen, and work with her on a compromise. And know that this too shall pass.

And even if things get worse I’ll figure it out. I will open myself to God to help me through.