You know that feeling when you walk into your kitchen and you are immediately blasted with an overwhelming deluge of anxiety and agitation because of the chaotic mess that lays sinisterly in front of you? The dishes are stacked so precariously in the sink that you’re concerned the ceramic jenga tower will come crashing down in a painfully obnoxious fashion if you so much as breathe too hard. The glass on top of the pyramid is one whisper of bad luck away from falling off the corner of the plate which will knock the spoon into the soaking pot and the mere splash of the murky liquid is enough to set off a domino effect of knives, mugs, and spatulas falling into the metal basin with an ear piercing clank, whack, and one concerning crack. You hold your breath, hoping that your favorite mug your bestie gave you during those rose colored years when your friends lived down the street and “you had your shit together and life was simple and good” is left unscathed. You passively allow the defensive apathy to seep into you, leveraging anything you can to numb the internal tension that feels like it’s eating you from the inside out. 

You finally muster the strength to pull your eyes away from the stress-basin and zoom your perspective outward. The magnificence of the mess suddenly crystallizes in painful clarity. You don’t remember the last time you saw your counter crumb free; mail from the last two weeks is strewn over the table in three separate haphazard stacks that once upon a time you believed resembled a logical sortation; your cutting board is crusted with residuals of this week’s meal elements; your coffee pot is splattered with dried brown bean water. Have I ever wiped that down? Your stovetop looks like it might as well be an abstract mosaic of caked liquids and slimy oils, and suddenly you can’t unsee the sticky spider web of fingerprints on the microwave and refrigerator. 

Your nose burns as you hold back the tears that are pooling. Why am I like this? Your insides feel like a hurricane that’s trapped in too small of a room–tight, twisted, atmospheric pressure rising. I’m an adult and I’m so incompetent that I can’t even keep a clean kitchen? So embarrassing. Pathetic. The door to the storm room is shaking as though at any given moment the wind and rain on the other side might rip the hinges off the frame, unleashing destruction and devastation into the already unstable environment. I hate this. I don’t want to keep doing this. 

You know, that feeling?

Rationally, you recognize that there are ultimately only two paths forward. Either roll over and cower in the face of the ominous environment; concede to eating cereal out of a measuring cup as it’s the only clean vessel at arms reach. Save the problem for future, more capable, you to deal with. She will be responsible. She’ll have a clear head. 

Or. 

You make a decision. You draw a line in the sand. You free yourself from the person you were and heed the call to the person you want to be, you believe yourself to be–the version you are destined to be. That’s it. I’m not willing to tolerate this madness anymore. And so. You take a deep breath, getting your mindset prepared to wo-manhandle the dishes like a beast and dive into the kitchen reset trenches. 

I’m well acquainted with the first path. The easiest path. I could navigate the trail with my eyes closed at this point. It is the devil I know. Why bother changing? You can try to change but at the end of the day you know the effort is futile. You’ll still be the deeply flawed, avoidant, and deflective person who walked into the room. Why invest all the physical and emotional energy in cleaning the kitchen when it’s just going to be messy again in a few hours?  I’ll have to do all this over again tonight so, what’s the point? I’ve genuinely contemplated whether those who regularly tidy their kitchen, make their bed everyday, and do their laundry every monday are hired by Big Cleaning (Clorox possibly? P&G?) to make you think you were inferior and incompetent if you didn’t engage in these basic housekeeping tasks on a regular basis. What better way to sell detergent and surface cleaner than to shame people into thinking they’re incompetent or worse, disgusting, individuals who will be looked down upon by every person who walks through the front door? Seems like a pretty bulletproof strategy to me. I’m not one to shy away from a conspiracy theory, afterall. 

When you’re drowning in the forceful riptide of depression, very little feels “worthwhile”. It’s so easy to let the tide take you out into the abyss of negligence because everything feels like it’s either too much or pointless. It’s all going to get dirty again in the blink of an eye anyway so why bother. It’s hard enough to get yourself to take an everything-shower or go grocery shopping,  much less clearing out the refrigerator. Mopping the floors?? Forget about it! Not a chaaaaance. 

Before you know it, you wake up two years later and nothing looks familiar, yet everything is exactly the same. Every corner of your life looks like it was frozen in time, only now it’s caked in dust and covered in cobwebs. You can’t discern where one literal and figurative mess ends and the other begins. You’re so overwhelmed by the ubiquity of chaos in your life that you wish for sleep to return just so you can escape the pervasive gloom. The thought of simply cleaning the kitchen now feels like childsplay you’d greedily accept in comparison to the shitshow all around you. A tragic comedy of your own creation.  

You sit there, stewing in your unique concoction of self loathing, apathy, guilt, resentment, and a pinch of hope that maybe today something will miraculously change. Your rational brain kicks in and you recognize that the toxic momentum you’ve created won’t defy all rules of nature and simply cease to have power just by willing it so. The dash of hope evaporates into the air like the smoke of the incense you burn in desperation to clear out negative energy. You’re a joke. As quickly as you can, you push the menacing voice away by channeling the apathy you’ve spent the last few years cultivating. Precious numbness. You cautiously consider the day ahead of you, timidly checking the responsibilities that are waiting for your attention. Anxiety tightens and pushes down in your stomach like a boulder. Same old, same old. Every day is the same pitiful cycle. The numbness allows you to remove yourself a bit. You look at yourself sitting there, staring at the ceiling. You watch yourself indifferently wading through another day of life’s obligations you actively try to weasel your way out of. And now you’re doing it with questionable hygiene. Yay. Can’t wait for the next 40 years of this, you sarcastically say to yourself. This isn’t what adulthood was supposed to be like. 

Enough of the self-pity talk. It’s time to go do your big girl job of emails and slack messages. All in the name of shareholder value! 

–

You spend the first quarter of your allotted time on earth (if you’re lucky) at the discretion of other peoples’ expectations, rules, and emotions (that were all too often volatile). This was supposed to be when you ran the show. When you dictate what your life looks like. It’s not supposed to feel like you’re stuck in slow-mo but the world around you is on fast forward, where by the time you reach your destination the finish line has already moved a few hundred yards further away. Where you resemble the caboose of a train that has gotten separated from the rest of the cars that are racing ahead of you and no matter how hard you try to keep up the space between keeps growing. 

I was the caboose and the life I had envisioned for myself was the runaway train. This is your fault. It’s easy to stew in self loathing when you realize that you did this. You’re doing this right now. You are the master of this dismal creation. The next episode of Always Sunny that you’ve already seen four times is going to automatically start playing in 12 seconds. You know you’re just going to let it start. You didn’t press play though, so it’s not your fault. Now it’s playing so I guess I’ll revisit the decision to be a better person when this episode ends, even though in the back of your head you know you’re going to yet again deflect responsibility onto Hulu’s auto-play setting. 

10:30 pm rolls around. Goddamnit, how did you waste another night to this mind numbing dissociative vortex. You’ve watched through the whole series four times in a row now. You don’t even like this episode. You should be doing something else, anything else. 

But the momentum is too strong. You’ve already wasted another day of your life to this bullshit, so you may as well forfeit the fight at this point. You’ve already failed today. You’re not going to be a changed person by turning it off at this point. And if you turn it off you’ll have to be alone with your thoughts, in the dark, the sound of artificial rain drops playing off spotify as your only distraction. You don’t want that. I keep watching. I can hardly see the train at this point. Was it ever really there? I probably imagined it, lost in my own delusion. Par for the course. 

It’s 1:00 am now. 

I often feel like Kronk in The Emperor’s New Groove, who has to decide between listening to the Angel or the Devil on either shoulder. Only I’m a five foot nothing chick who hasn’t hit the gym in a solid three years so honestly I’m nothing like Kronk. My self deprecating inner monologue doesn’t even allow me to compare myself to a voiced over cartoon with big muscles and a small brain. I am not worthy. You’re much more of a Smeagol/Gollum type of person. Small, weak, defensive, thin skinned. Worn away from years of desperation and greed to “make it” in this Middle-America Earth. My future, my independence, my precious. 

“Look at you, you’re pathetic. You’re going to be a zombie in the morning. And you have so much to do! Tomorrow you need to get your life together and on top of that you now need to make up for being a trash-holio person today. You’re going to have to work twice as hard!” Says my inner Gollum. 

“I’ll be up to it then. I’ll be a better version of myself tomorrow,” my inner Smeagol, weakly defends.

“No you won’t. And you know it,” Gollum responds simply. 

–

After a marathon of snoozing for an extra 9 minutes (Just one more. Okay, this is the last one I swear.) I finally drag myself out of bed while reeking of disappointment and incompetence. I have T-7 minutes to open my computer and sit at my desk like the model employee my Smeagol was convinced I would be today. I go downstairs, my morning coffee the one thing I look forward to. It’s an opportunity to make a decision for myself. To decide. To control. To execute. 

Who am I going to be once I get downstairs? Am I going french press with creamer? I just bought those brown sugar clusters, that would be yummy. Ooooh maybe I’ll actually whip out that frother today and make myself a lazy-version latte. So many choices! And the mug of the day??? Gosh, the world is my oyster! 

I walk into the kitchen. 

Immediately my consciousness, my flimsy reality, rots away. 

That feeling. 

I’m right back where I started. I’m still disgusting. I’m still an incompetent adult. My kitchen is still a mess. My life is still a mess. I’m no closer to living the life of independence and autonomy and agency that younger me saw for myself. The only difference between yesterday-me and today-me is that I’m one day older. I have one less day to become the version of me that I crave. I have one fewer day to bask in the pleasure and confidence knowing that I lived my life the way I wanted to. The way I deserved to. 

Pressure’s on, who are you going to be? Which path are you going to choose?

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, just like my therapist taught me (#WWMTD). In through my nose for a count of four. Hold for four. Out. One. Two. Three. Four. 

I open my eyes.