Transition Out Of Chaos, Part One

Introduction

My life has been full of labels, but “lazy” is the one that has hurt me the most. All of my life I have heard from those around me how I am just so lazy. Over time it wore at me, and I just accepted myself as a lazy slob. It took recovering from a traumatic brain injury for me to realize that the “lazy” label was all wrong. I’m not lazy, I just struggle with several of my executive function skills. 

Growing up, I struggled to keep a clean bedroom. I amassed lots of junk, and thanks to a hoarding tendency I developed young (likely thanks to my packrat grandparents who were heavily involved in raising me), I struggled to keep up with it all. My mom would come in and help me clean up, only to be frustrated upon finding yet another bag in a bag, in a bag. Old schoolwork, electronics manuals, birthday cards from ten years ago were stuffed here, there, and everywhere. 

I’d constantly hear things from my mom about how I just left messes everywhere (and she wasn’t wrong!), and I’d think to myself, “I have no idea what she’s talking about. I cleaned that up.” My mom would talk about how messy the house was, and she couldn’t stand it. I’d look around and see a clean, pleasant home.

I always thought my mom was being too uptight and that her standards were unreasonable and unachievable for anyone to keep up with. I think, at some point, I just became so overwhelmed by never being tidy enough that I gave up caring. I would just put up with my mom’s breakdowns because I didn’t know what else to do. I could not understand what she was talking about. I could not understand how she could not only walk into a room and tell what exactly needed to be done in it, but also make a list prioritizing what to do and when. 

Growing Up With Mess and Misunderstandings

As a kid, walking into my messy bedroom after being told, “Go clean it or you’re grounded until it’s clean,” I would feel so overwhelmed, so lost. I’d stare for a bit, maybe pick up a CD that was out of place or nicely stack some scattered papers, but I’d have no idea what exactly I needed to do. Unfortunately, I lacked the depth of understanding on how to exactly explain this conundrum to my mom. Though at that point in time, I don’t know that my mom would have understood even if I could have explained it properly. I wasn’t trying to be lazy. I was desperately wanting my room to be tidy and nice, but I just couldn’t figure out how to make that happen. 

A Spark of Change and the Importance of Letting Go

As I grew older, things didn’t change much—actually they worsened the older I got and the more shit I collected (hoarded). I would manage to keep a tidy room for 4-6 weeks, and then it would slowly turn back into a chaotic sty—until January 2019 when my mom read some of Marie Kondo’s work. I watched her declutter and organize our home, and I was inspired to read Kondo’s books and try the whole “Spark Joy” thing myself. 

I have a lot of criticisms of Marie Kondo’s style, but one thing stuck with me and helped me start on a life changing journey. Kondo says, when letting go of items, you should hug them and thank them for their service. I know that sounds corny to a lot of people, but it struck something within me. For the first time in my life, I felt free to let go of my excessive amount of stuff, only keeping that which still sparked joy for me. While this did not solve all of my issues, it did help me stop hoarding!

The Turning Point

Later in 2019 would come a tumultuous period of time in my life. In July, we lost my grandfather to esophageal cancer. Then in September, while still in mourning and trying to figure out how to go on without him, I was in a car crash that changed my life forever. The crash could have been so much worse, but I still received a traumatic brain injury from it.

Thankfully, we have a phenomenal brain injury recovery center in my area, and I was lucky enough to receive some treatment there before car insurance cut me off (that’s a story for another day). I worked with a physical therapist, a vocational therapist, and a speech therapist. Little did I know the speech therapist would help me find the answers to questions I didn’t realize I had.  

My speech therapist would have conversations with me while we worked on recovering my language skills. One day she asked me why I was rushing to do everything by myself, and why wouldn’t I ask for help with things. I thought about it and admitted that I wasn’t very good at asking for help because I hated feeling like a burden. I confessed that, with my chronic illness, I already felt like a burden on my mom, and that I wanted to get better as quickly as possible so that I wouldn’t be adding additional burdens to her.

My speech therapist said that was understandable but unrealistic. She advised me that I couldn’t do it all by myself, and that was okay. When therapy ended that day, instead of giving me a reading game for homework like usual, she instead told me to think of something that I was struggling with, and to just openly ask my mom directly for help with that.

The Power of Asking for Help

Not being one to skip out on my therapy homework, I knew I was going to have to think of something. It just so happened that since the crash, my bedroom had gotten to a point it had never been before—piles of stuff everywhere; you could barely navigate through it. To say it was a source of great shame is an understatement. I did not want to ask my mom for help with my room. She swore off helping me clean it years ago, but I knew that was what I needed help with the most. So I thought about what I needed most, and decided I could ask her to help by making a to-do list. That night I approached my mom and asked if she would help me create a to-do list for my room, expecting a lecture. I was very pleasantly surprised when my mom said that yes, she could help me with that.

The next day she analyzed my bedroom and created a to-do list based on what she saw in my room, and so I got to work. I was surprised how easy it was to follow her list and surprised at how quickly my room was coming together. Never had it been so easy to tidy my room.

So when I went back to meet with my speech therapist and reported how asking for help went, I told her how well it was going. I told her I was surprised how easy it was for me to follow my mom’s list and how I’ve never been able to tidy up like that on my own.

It was at this point my, speech therapist and I started talking about my ADHD diagnosis, my brain injury, and executive functions. We specifically touched on task initiation and prioritizing/organizing/breaking down tasks. We discussed my struggles of not knowing what to do when I walk into a room to tidy up. It all started to make sense. I started to understand what was “wrong” with me all these years. The only problem was that I had trouble figuring out how to fix it. 

Understanding Mental Load

Fast forward to last year (early 2023 specifically), I went to New Zealand to stay with my boyfriend and his son. It was this experience that would be the final key to understanding myself and my “laziness.” I will preface this by saying that my boyfriend is not a dirty person; he’s quite tidy on his own. However, he’s grown accustomed to a level of filth by existing with his young son. I came from an immaculate home, and I was not used to this level of unkempt house—the sticky remotes and food wrappers shoved into the cushions of the sofa.

It was hard for me to adjust. My standards for comfortable living were just different. While living there, I tried to maintain the house—cleaning while his son was at school—only for the kid to come home and get jam all over the table I just wiped down an hour before. It was taxing on me. I couldn’t understand why the kid just couldn’t pick up his messes and not get sticky stuff everywhere! It was at that moment that I realized what my mom was dealing with all those years ago. The concept of mental load suddenly made so much sense. And, my god believe me, I began repenting for everything I put my mom through with my messes. 

It was at this point that I started realizing different people have different thresholds for what they view as clean and tidy. I realized my mom wasn’t being uptight or obsessive; she just had a lower threshold for messes. Around this time, I kept seeing recommendations for the book How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis. And so when I got home from my trip to New Zealand, I bought the book and read it. It helped me make so much sense of my world and tidiness. It also helped me finish my transformation into a tidy person. 

To be continued.

Coming Up

Next time I will delve into How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis and how it changed me.