Put me in the compost pile to decompose me for a while.

As I perused my news reader over breakfast a few weeks ago, I was distracted by a petulant buzzing sound. Thinking at first that my shower had left water in my ear, I tipped my head over and pounded on the side of it. This was for nought as the buzzing continued. I stood up like a madwoman and scurried around the kitchen until I identified the location and source of the sound: Petulant buzz, thy name is fly in the compost bin.

Caught somewhere in between disgust and hipster (let's face it, compost bins are pretty trendy), I quickly finished my breakfast so that I could take out the compost bag before leaving for work. I hadn't taken more than two steps down the stairs out of my apartment when the compost bag gave out. Our stairs were covered in compost; it was as if someone had delivered those pies from The Help to my home.

As someone with a general appreciation for hygiene, I was absolutely horrified. With two minutes to spare before I would miss my shuttle to work, I used a piece of cardboard to push the compost back into the bag. This obviously did nothing but spread a thin layer of compost all over the steps.

This is a disaster. I'll take care of it when I get home, I thought as I ran towards my shuttle. For the entirety of my one-hour ride, I couldn't help but feel self-conscious about the aroma of compost I was surely exuding. Either my friends were being really nice, or it was just in my head. The entire day, all I wanted to do was get home to clean my steps. When I got home that evening, it was dark and I was spent. I had neither the energy nor interest in cleaning the steps which were now being circled by flies. I did my best to ignore it and went inside. Showered and waiting for my dinner to cook, I filled up a glass of water and went downstairs to pour it all over the steps. This actually did nothing but make our cement steps a slippery hazard for my roommates.

Defeated and still hungry, I gave up. The mess continued to gnaw at me for the next several days, but I didn't have the ability to properly clean it (and by ability maybe I mean time or dedication).

Finally, I started to aggressively ignore, then naturally forget about the whole incident and the necessity to clean it. It rained a couple times soon after, and the remnants of compost began to disappear. Once the actual artifacts had disappeared, a few weeks of green-stained cement followed.

Today as I left my apartment to head to work, I caught site of the steps reflecting sunlight in all their marbled-cement glory. Wow. The compost-stains are completely gone. As I sit here writing about it, I can't help but feel a little silly how much I let what quite literally is a bag of shit get to me.

Life is sort of messy. We all know that. Still, it is rare that we are prepared for the messes we make and even more rare for us to be able to immediately clean them up. And most of the time, the mess is uncomfortable. We often fail to recognize, especially in the heat of the moment, that this is completely okay. In fact, sometimes it may not even be necessary for us to take any action. Sometimes nature will effortlessly take its course. Could I have taken the compost bin out before it weighed a million pounds and was completely unsupportable by its bag? Yes. But once it was at that point, could I have stopped the bag from exploding? No. And regarding the mess on the steps, was it worth the agony? Not really. Now, several weeks later, the problem itself has organically composted.

Go through life continually moving up the stairs, immune to any barriers, no matter how foul they might smell. Not everything can be beautiful from the start, but you know, even trash naturally turns into nutrient-enriched fertilizer.