I keep trying to convince myself that it is fine to be a functioning adult with a brain held together by caffeine, trauma responses, and whatever emotional duct tape I find lying around. But the second anything goes wrong inside my head, that entire structure collapses like a folding chair at a family reunion. I do not handle emotional discomfort like a normal person. No. When my brain starts to short circuit, I immediately flash back to fetus Genna's problem solving mentality. The problem may be internal, but the response is always external. Something hurts emotionally. Something feels off. Some existential dread oozes in through the cracks. What do I do? I clean my desk like my life depends on it. I scrub the bathroom like I am preparing it for sainthood. I reorganize the living room furniture for the fifteenth time in a year because apparently rearranging objects is my preferred method of avoiding introspection.
The funniest part of all of this is that none of these tasks fix a single thing actually bothering me. Not one. The emotional crisis is still screaming in the corner like a feral raccoon. But instead of addressing the raccoon, I turn my attention to wiping down a counter as if Mr. Clean himself will descend from the heavens and grant me clarity. I will sit there, deeply unwell, aggressively vacuuming the baseboards like I am auditioning for a cleaning-product commercial nobody asked for. I cannot fix what is happening in my head, so I fix everything around my head instead. It is not helpful. It is not wise. It is not a coping strategy anyone would recommend. But it works for me. It separates my emotional reaction from my logical brain just well enough to let the emotional knee-jerk reply fade, which is all the encouragement it needs to repeat this horrible little cycle forever.
There is something profoundly unhinged about the way my emotional chaos translates directly into domestic chaos. I will go through a moment of distress and suddenly decide that the digital files on my computer must be organized immediately. Not later. Not tomorrow. Right now. My nervous system will be in full meltdown mode while I’m sitting there renaming every screenshot I have ever taken, like this is the step that will unlock enlightenment. Spoiler: it never does. It just results in me staring at a beautifully alphabetized folder structure while still feeling like my brain has been lightly roasted over a campfire. There is no wisdom gained here. No lessons learned. Just the relentless, panicked determination to assert control over absolutely anything besides my own emotions.
People talk about growth like it is this gentle climb toward stability. That is adorable. My reality looks more like a Looney Tunes character hanging off a cliff by one hand while using the other to dust the windowsills. I am not serene. I am not reflective. I am not someone who sits with her feelings like a mature adult. I am someone who scrubs the inside of the microwave at midnight because my brain whispered, “Everything is falling apart,” and I replied, “Right, let me clean something about it.” There is no enlightened arc here. There is no soft music playing while I learn to self-regulate. There is only the desperate white-knuckling of a woman who refuses to emotionally unravel until at least three household surfaces sparkle.
I could say I am working on it. I could say I have discovered a healthier way to exist. But the truth is, I am still gripping the steering wheel of life with both hands while the car skids on emotional black ice. My coping strategies have not evolved. They have not matured. They have not improved in the slightest. If anything, they have gotten more efficient. I can deep-clean a bathroom with the speed of someone trying to outrun her own thoughts. I can reorganize a room faster than most people can form a complete sentence
So yes, it is okay not to be okay. I am living proof, because I am very much not okay and yet still here, still upright, still domestically spiraling as needed. I may not know how to fix my emotional circuitry, but I sure as hell know how to rearrange the living room in a way that makes me feel slightly less like I am imploding. And honestly, that is the only victory I am claiming right now. Not healing. Not self-discovery. Just survival via Windex and strategic furniture placement.
Because this is my little corner of the internet, and if I want to call out my trauma responses for being deranged gremlin nonsense, then I will. I am messy, I am stressed, I am not entirely well, but at least my bathroom is clean.