On The Fridge

I am going to preface this by saying that I am not perfect. And frequently I like to share things about myself that are not perfect, but that give me that human edge, that whimsical charm you don't get from robots, mostly because they don't have souls, but also because they ARE perfect, and perfect is foreign, and alien, and grating.

This is a different sort of not perfect, not something meant to win anyone's hearts or affection. It's mostly just a confession that I realize I can be a horrible, flawed individual, and I want to revel in that for a moment.

And then I want it preserved in Google archives for the future of the entire world to be able to read about forever. It's a guilt thing.

There are three shelves in the fridge I share with my roommates. There are three girls who live in my apartment. Three total, including me. This has not been the case for most of the year and a half I have lived here, so I gladly and willingly shared a fridge shelf with other people, cramming my milk and my pickle jar and my seedless strawberry what-have-you in there, which were mainly the only things I DID have in there. But now, three and three, there needs be no sharing.

So a while ago I asked to have my own shelf, and my roommates complied, moving there things about and hither, and I had my own shelf. Which contained:

• 1 jar of pickles

• 1 snack-size container of applesauce

• 1 small, half-empty container of chives & onions cream cheese

• some old salsa

So it's not like I can't spare the room. Yet in my mind, that shelf is My Shelf, and nothing else should touch it. It's not that I'm lacking in my own personal, private space because I am smashed up living with too many people and fighting to brush my teeth while someone else styles her hair and someone else applies her fourth layer of mascara in the same itty bitty mirror and OH SWEET MERCIFUL HEAVENS I HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO CALL MY OWN, JUST ALLOW ME MY FRIDGE SHELF.

No.

I have my own, very spacious room, to fling about my dirty laundry as I please, so that when I wake up in the middle of the night it looks like an old minefield. I keep odd hours, so I'm almost never brushing my teeth when anyone else is even around. I can jump about and cavort and frolic in my own space as much as I wish, and yet. And yet. When I open that fridge door and see something foreign on my shelf, I can feel my jaw tightening, and seriously, the urge to throw everything in there on the ground and petulantly let it decay in non-refrigerated agony does spring to mind.

But there is another Yet. I have not said one word to my roommates about it. Sometimes I move their things to whichever shelf I guess those things belong to, and sometimes I let some things stay. But I haven't said anything, because I realize how irrational my fridge coveting is, and - well, I did use the word covet on purpose. It's bad, it's stupid, it's SINFUL, and maybe if I persist in it, maybe I will grow out of it, or trick myself into a more worthwhile application of my time.