It’s late. Almost midnight. Tomorrow, the cleaning lady is coming. The kitchen smells like detergent and guilt. I scrub the sink as if someone might see in it the reflection of everything I’m not. Everything I hide behind the order. Everything boiling under my skin.
I push up my sleeves and scrub away every trace of my existence. Down to the bone. Down to the truth. There are still clothes to fold, the kids’ toys to gather, and the pieces of myself scattered among them. I always clean before the cleaning lady comes. And after she leaves. Always. A ridiculous ritual, like a puppet’s dance.
Because it’s not about dust, or the clothes thrown around, or the crumbs on the counter. It’s about me. I do this for myself. So no one sees. So no one knows. So no one thinks I can’t handle it. Every time, I wonder if she sees the mess. Does she see me? In all my exhaustion, in all the chaos inside my head? What if she realises I’m not the kind of woman who deserves to have a cleaning lady?
I fix my mask and scrub faster before the shame can swallow me whole. The shame that I pay someone else to clean instead of doing it myself. As if I’m not capable. As if I don’t have two hands. Who do I think I am? Have I forgotten where I came from? Why do I keep complaining about being tired? Other women manage.
It’s not about cleanliness. It’s not about this house.
I don’t want anyone to see what’s in my head. I would shatter with a single look. Because if they see, it’s shameful. If they see, they’ll know I don’t have it all together like everyone thinks. They will see that I live in a house where every object is a monument to my failures. A glass left on the table—lazy. Shoes tossed around—messy. An unmade bed—careless. If they see, they’ll know I’m drowning in my own life. They will see that all I can do is swim against a current determined to drag me under. That my whole history is written in the neatness of beds made before sunrise and dishes never left in the sink. Generations of well-trained women before me, undone by me.
“A woman too emancipated for the world she lives in.”
I was raised to believe that a clean house means a clean mind, a clean life. That if everything is spotless, then I am a good woman. That anything less than perfection is a stain on my worth. That anything not polished and ironed to perfection is a stain on my respectability. That every crumb on the counter diminishes my value. A legacy passed down like a family recipe, from grandmother to mother, from mother to daughter. With a side of shame.
The shame of being imperfect. Of having needs. Of being tired. Of speaking up instead of getting over it. Of asking for help. Of being human.
I think about them, these women who live inside me, with rough hands and hard faces, and I’m afraid. Afraid to disappoint them.
I was raised to be unstoppable. And taught that no matter what I do, it will never be enough. There is always room for better. For more.
And somewhere in all of this, I lost myself.
This is a burnout no one talks about. Not the corporate kind. Not the profession kind. The kind that comes from trying to hold up an entire world and collapsing under its weight, mop in hand.
I feel it in my body. In the exhaustion that doesn’t fade with sleep or vacations. In the constant irritation. In the way even the smallest things make me want to run. In the dull ache in my neck. In the palpitations that come and go, warning me that something inside is about to break.
How many women do this? How many are burdened by the Myth of The Perfect Woman? How many scrub away their guilt with detergent until they’re too tired to feel it? How many, with children clinging to their legs, cry into the sink over dishes, convinced they’re not doing enough? How many suffocate under the weight of perfection? Under the belief that a woman’s worth is measured in spotless floors and starched pillowcases?
*
I was at a friend’s house in Latvia, picking up my child. A Bulgarian mom was there too. As I walked in, the host’s son spilled water on the floor. I didn’t even have time to blink. The Bulgarian mom had already grabbed a towel. In a second, the floor was dry. We looked at each other. And we understood. The same legacy. The same automatic gestures. The same tangled knot of guilt in our brains.
We talked. They did it too, cleaning before the cleaner arrived. Straining every time their mothers visited, just to make it seem like everything was perfect. Them. Me. So many others. Inheritors of an invisible deep-seated balkan shame, a battle that never ends.
And then, the Netherlands. A different world. Women who invite you into messy homes without a single apology. Dirty dishes, toys everywhere, glasses left on the table. And yet, no one sees them as failures. The mess doesn’t define them.
A home is not a museum. It’s a place where a child spills water, and a mother’s reputation doesn’t spill with it.
And I wonder, will I ever be able to stop?
*
For a year, between burnout and long Covid, I haven’t called anyone to help me clean. Even when I needed it the most. Because I couldn’t do the pre-cleaning. Or the post-cleaning. So I suffered in silence. Struggling like a fish out of water. Unseen, but yet, still judged. Shame and guilt, my inability to look under the rug, outweighed my need for help.
But today, I called her again. And for the first time, I left the crumbs on the counter. For the first time, the toys stayed scattered. For the first time, I went to work without erasing the traces of my own existence.
For the first time, the cleaning lady saw me as I am.
And so did I.
I didn’t die.
Now, I dream of the day I drink my coffee without getting up to wipe a stain I notice on the counter.
And I know that one day, it will be enough just to be.