thoughts about squalor

05 Sep, 2026

I live in filth, but if you saw my room briefly, I’m sure you’d disagree. It’s no showroom, but things seem orderly. The floors are glistening, freshly swept and mopped; the cupboards are stocked with symmetrical rows of untouched plates. But look closer. Look at the unmade bed, the wilting lead paint, the insect-infested lights. This is squalor.

But the floors, the floors I keep clean. It’s easy to tell when the floors are dirty; you can feel it in every step. And so, I’m on my knees—with a ragged towel in hand—every week. Is that not—the oldest—most natural—posture of man? For Sisyphus had his boulder and I have my cloth, but the two of us seem to kneel before the same all-benevolent all-powerful Almighty. Whether He answers, whether He notices, whether He will ever respond to our crying souls, I do not know. Less than a year ago, I was baptized. Though I’d have denied it vehemently, a small part of me clung to the hope that afterwards, my life would change. That I would experience a new world of magic and wonder. That never came; my life continued as it did before, and a moss of rot grew in my faith.

Don’t misunderstand me—though I struggle, I believe in God. But to believe, you must acknowledge that God has not made faith easy. For an all-knowing God, how simple would it have been to include within His texts hidden mathematical proofs far beyond the time of the Bible? How could anyone deny faith then? For an all-powerful God, how trivial would it be to ensure that His followers follow? How could anyone be disgusted by the whitewashed tombs then? For a merciful God, how could He allow such evil to sweep the world? For our benefit? For my benefit? For I consider myself a second choice amongst men and while I can accept that some lives are lost for the greater good, I must ask: what about the children. Grown lives lost can be comforted by inhuman logic, but even Minerva’s mind must falter in the attempts to justify the deaths of children, who are too young to have sinned.

How can Ivan Karamazov’s cry not resonate: All-knowing, All-powerful, Merciful, I respectfully return my ticket to paradise. Condemn me.¹

And so, I’ve spent nights in my spiritual squalor, spinning the mental lazy Susan so that my self-hatred comes around as misanthropy and back to self-hatred again. I find myself back on my knees, on the floor, second choice amongst men, scrubbing with ragged towel in hand.

Magic and wonder may never descend from above, but I hope, stubbornly and against the evidence of every ordinary day, that I might spin the platter one last time and see squalor flicker into grace—that not only may the floors glisten, but that the wretch scrubbing them be saved too.