There is a word I applied to myself for years, and it was the wrong one.
Matt Damon, the well-known and well-liked actor, was once described like this by his longtime best friend Ben Affleck: “Matt is a wonderful guy. I love him. He's my best friend. He's been great to me my whole life. He's a brilliant guy. But I wouldn't advise anyone to live with him. You see, he has this quality … you know how some people can just completely tune things out? I think that's exactly why he's such a great actor, because he can focus like that. You know what I mean? One of the things he completely tunes out is the idea that you have to wash something or throw it away when you're done with it. After my brother and I had cleaned up after the guy for years, we finally said: ‘You know what? We're going on a sit-down strike. We'll just wait and see how long he lasts before he actually gets up and realizes: My God, I'm drowning in garbage!’ And we held out for weeks – for two weeks we didn't lift a finger in the apartment. One day Casey and I came home: there was Matt in shorts and a T-shirt, sitting in the middle of what used to be the living room, playing – I think it was the '92 Sega hockey game –, literally surrounded by concentric circles of garbage. Pizza boxes … I looked down at one of those sushi trays that had been lying there for a week and a half, and there were maggots in it. So we just said: ‘We give up. We surrender. You're too good. We can't beat you.’ And he just said, totally casual: ‘Hey guys, what's up?’ And we were like: ‘There's a rat crawling on you, that's what's up!’ But you know, God bless his wife Lucy. There's definitely a place reserved in heaven for her.”
So I am (was) in good company. I used it the way people use it here: as a somewhat cozier word for “my place is a disaster.” Although someone once told me that afterwards he couldn't look me in the eye for a while. A little self-accusation, a little apology in advance, in case someone rings the doorbell unannounced.
Because “Messie” isn't an adjective. It's an illness.
Two Words That Sound Like One
The German word “Messie” does come from the English messy, but it means something completely different. A Messie suffers from hoarding disorder — since 2022 with its own number in the diagnostic catalogue, ICD-11 6B24. The core isn't untidiness. The core is that throwing things away isn't possible. Not “gets put off,” but isn't possible. The very thought of it causes real distress.
English messy, or more bluntly: slob, means: you're sloppy. You don't tidy up. Period. No diagnosis, no number, no suffering — except perhaps that of your roommates.
And now comes the part that genuinely surprised me when I read up on it: the two describe opposite movements.
- A Messie holds on to things. They mean too much to him to let them go.
- A slob leaves things lying around. They mean too little to him to bother.
Too much attachment versus too little attention. That isn't the same thing in different degrees of severity. Those are two different problems.
What I Take Away From This
I have two takeaways:
The first: anyone who calls himself a “Messie” - as I did out of ignorance - even though he's a slob, declares himself ill rather than negligent — and if you're ill, it's not your fault. That's convenient, and that's exactly why it's dangerous. Negligence is less comfortable, but it's the truth, and at least you can work with the truth. (The reverse holds just as much: someone who really hoards won't be helped by “pull yourself together.” They need help, not a cleaning schedule.)
The second: the man with the maggots in his sushi won an Oscar.
And things have gotten a lot better for me. I don't leave food scraps lying around for days. I'm certainly still not perfect at it. But compared to before, my car is tidy. There are still things lying around in it that I don't always need, or things I need to get repaired. But back then I had empty packaging sitting in there for weeks.