Lately my life has been messy. Like in all the ways: emotionally, physically, spiritually...and my house, my house has been kinda gross. Now I will fully admit that my gross is still relatively clean. But for me, it was a drastic departure in my usual tidiness.
So what happens to a neat freak when life gets messy...well, this one, this one freaks the fuck out. Except I didn’t this time. I just allowed life in all the ways to just be messy...and I didn’t worry about it. Instead, I cleaned up what bothered me, went on walks, went to the gym, did my usual things, except I left maniacal cleaning off the proverbial table.
And guess what? Life proceeded along just fine.
And I grew a little, learned a little. I did not perish from the lack of tidiness. I didn’t freak the fuck out. I just accepted that life in all the ways was messy right now and just allowed it to be as it was. I am not sure about you, but I don’t DO that! Ever. Accept things that are totally unacceptable (messiness) and lacking in perfection? Me? NEVER!
But I am and I did and I will likely again. I learn so very much in the mess when I do not allow it to completely overwhelm me. I also had to do a fuckton of work to get to the place where my house being messy would not send me into some sort of OCD spiral. And that took several decades.
I still like things neat and tidy but I am learning to live with things being messier - externally which has allowed passage of some internal messiness to work itself out. And has resulted in me just living my life, one moment at a time and not getting all worked up about it.
My schedules and plans more flexible, less rigid. If something I want or need to get done can’t be done in its usual timeframe, I move it to another timeframe. It is as if my willingness to allow things to unravel has allowed them to be reknitted back together in a better, more malleable form.
Perhaps the best part of all this emotional, physical and mental untidiness is that I don’t feel so stressed and worried and worked the fuck up all the time. Things get done, or they don’t. Things get clean and then they get messy again. I am a bastion of sanity and then I am not. I am good, then I am despondently sad and depressed.
Life is messy. And because I am part of the living, I am, in turn, messy sometimes. My house has been messy...and I still feel somewhat ashamed about that and I am not sure that comes from...it isn’t like anyone has come over and told me this. It is just an astute awareness of me failing to live up to my own standards...no one else need be involved.
So I am learning to be a messy neat freak. And I am learning for that to be ok. I am learning to be present and just live my life, and accept the messiness as just part of living. And that feels kinda healthy...messier but healthier...which is kinda rad.
This tracks...