Abridged version published in On Our Selection News December 17, 2016

Going from living alone to living with with the constant reminder that there are other people in the world than me is interesting.

Mostly it’s pretty good. My flatmate knows where things are, tells me when I might need to take a jacket and doesn’t judge when I eat excessively. Plus, I only had to bring my clothes and decorative ladder when I moved in.

But shared living has its downsides – namely in that it makes you aware of how mentally unstable you are -something I discovered that shortly after moving in.

My flatmate had gone shopping, put her groceries on the kitchen bench before unloading them. This is normal. No problems. Except she left a can of deodorant there on the counter.

I never thought that a deodorant can could break me mentally, but it damn near nearly did. Because it wasn’t just there for a few minutes or even an hour, it was there FOR DAYS.

At first it was understandable. I mean, that’s what people do, I told myself. I’ve read about other people and it seems not everyone has to put things in their right place immediately. I resolved to be as normal as possible and let the can be. But this good sense slowly eroded with each day, as I became more and more unhinged. And the more I thought about it, the worse it got.

Because what really niggled at me was the fact that I was annoyed that this annoyed me. A lingering can isn’t something that should bother a person. It should be completely easy to deal with. In fact, it shouldn’t even be something you have to “deal with”. It’s a deodorant can, not a smelly pile of dishes or a steaming poo on white carpet. The biggest issue in my life wasn’t a can of scented liquid, but my big issue was that it was a big issue, you know?

It began eating away at my soul. My sanity was crumbling like shortbread without enough butter.

I didn’t want to touch the can, because that would be interfering with my flatmate’s stuff but eventually I couldn’t live another day seeing that can on the kitchen counter mocking me. I tried to avoid it. But the kitchen is fairly vital to life being the place where the food is kept, and the open plan layout of the apartment melds the kitchen melds into the lounge room. So even when you’re on the couch, you can see it from the corner of your eye.

You can’t really say, “can you please move this can because it is destroying my mental wellbeing and I think it is plotting against me,” because you may just make your roommate feel unsafe with you in the house. You don’t want to draw attention to the fact that you’ve added an inanimate can of deodorant to your list of enemies  (between jerks who throw cigarette butts out of car windows and people who shout “taxi” when you drop something at a party). This isn’t normal. And you know that.

What kind of person loses it over a can? Sure, it’s terrible for the environment and was probably made using cheap labour, but other than that it’s harmless.

You’re not normally like this, you tell yourself. Back when I was living by myself I was totally calm and relaxed about this sort of thing.

Sure, I may have moved my carefully-placed swan statues back in their proper places when some unruly visitor moved it a quarter of an inch, but I was pretty chilled out most of the time. It wasn’t about being obsessive or controlling – it was about styling. I was merely following good interior design principals.

But here I was spiralling into madness. Maybe I wasn’t cut out to live with people. Maybe I need to live in a well-styled cabin in the woods. Maybe I should burn everything.

And then one day, the can was gone. And everything was fine again.