...It's Time to Let It Go! (approx. 3½ - 4½ min. read) P.S. Sorry for the profanity, but I’m feeling quite rebellious.

Anyone have issues with pandemonium because I do? It fucks with my brain like it’s nobody’s business, trying to tell me that everything is completely out of control and I can’t hear myself think. My mind becomes an abyss and I do things like double-booking myself or I miss things all together. Not only that, I think I’ve written things down; critical things and I even see myself doing it in my mind, but I haven’t. Worse yet, I get really irritable and do nothing but mumble grumpiness under my breath.

I’m thinking that you’re probably asking yourself why I think this is an important topic for this week’s blog and I’m going to tell you. It\s because I currently feel like my life is pure pandemonium and I’m not sure how I’m going to get through the next four months or so. I’m living in an area that’s approximately three hundred square feet, with the love of my life; Gary, and a service dog; Laddie, that weighs eighty pounds. This means we each have about one hundred square feet to ourselves and it’s making me feel claustrophobic.

Add some “mess” to the tops of flat services, like my laptop, journal, a few dirty dishes and plans for the house and my mind starts to go squirrelly and that’s because between the dining room table, entertainment centre and kitchen, there isn’t much more surface space than the top of a picnic table.

Then there’s the never-ending laundry hanging about while it’s drying. Gary’s and my bath towels on the backs of the dining room chairs, my lingerie in the bathroom and anything else that needs to be hand washed hanging wherever I can find a spot. It feels like pure mayhem because no matter where I look there’s clutter.

I would go outside for a reprieve, but right now it’s a construction zone and not only are there lots of things for me to trip over, there are foundation holes for me to fall into. I don’t want it to sound like I’m making excuses because I’m not, it’s part of the brain injury. For the most part, I “live” in my head instead of living in the present, if you know what I mean, and until things are safer, I’m going to stay inside.

When I spoke to Gary this morning about my concerns and how much everything was messing with my brain, he got frustrated and said he didn’t get it. He said that we were building a house; something we’ve always wanted to do, and he couldn’t understand why I wasn’t happy about that. He also couldn’t understand how I’m not able to look past the piles of dirt and see what he sees, and that is the fact we’re on our way to achieving a lifelong goal; building our dream home.

We’ve been together almost thirteen years and it’s times like these that remind me how much he doesn’t get my mental illness. Or how much it affects my thought process or where my brain goes (involuntarily, I might add), and I walked away from the conversation with Gary shaking my head and wondering how I was supposed to see what he saw?

He knows me, and he knows that when I get stressed, I clean. I started reverting to this behaviour when I was in my early teens after my parents divorced because at the time I felt invisible …and it was one of the few things I did that made my mother happy.

…but and it’s a big but, I know that my compulsion to clean isn’t normal, and instead of getting down about it, I need to look at my behaviour differently … more positively in fact. Because when I do, I see that there was a time and place for needing that kind of control over my surroundings, but that time is over. This is where my home is now, and the need to keep my living area spotless wasn’t my idea in the first place, it was merely to keep the peace, so I believe it’s time to let it go.

Stay safe and stay strong. Thanks for following.