So, I think it was some stupid link on Facebook but this poor child's parent apparently sent in a photo of the child's room that you can't see the floor in (albeit, the fuckin room is tiny) and the article said they were voted the messiest child or something. The first thing I experienced was disgust, anger, anxiety, and.. Basically, I wanted to scream.

My mental illnesses started setting in before I was 10. One that was never diagnosed until I was older was ADHD with obsessive tendencies. Now that it's been studied a lot more, it's now known that ADHD presents itself very differently in girls than it does in boys and one of the differences happens to be keeping clean spaces and if you have ADHD or you have other obligations like children you'd know how you start cleaning and then OH LOOK A THING and then cleaning takes the backburner. Well, my abusive mother would fucking berate and humiliate me constantly for how messy my room was (and because I've always had fairly small rooms or have shared a room with my half sister, the "mess" is like.. clothes on the floor or random trash.) And how I was the "dirtiest girl she had ever met" and then my very traditional grandparents would get on me too once she abandoned me with them. I would just constantly be ridiculed and humiliated because I was just so messy or whatever. This was made worse by the fact that my half sister is the golden child and basically the exact opposite of me. She has to have everything in a very specific place and she keeps her things very tidy. My mom or grandma would get tired of my messy room (for no reason other than to get angry) and they'd clean it for me and this often meant throwing things out without my consent and then the weeks long guilt trip. Any time I go to my room "you better not make a mess! I just cleaned that room!" And it would make me so angry because even to this day, my grandmother sees a "mess" and just screams about it and it's like, God fucking forbid my living space shows that I actually live here every day.

But, I just saw this little girl's room and I thought "what if she has ADHD? What if she has a mental illness? Why would they publicly humiliate her like that?"

And I know that so many people think this is funny or not a big deal but like God damn it, stop expecting a living space to look like nobody fucking lives there at every moment of every day.