Stop Trying to Control Chaos and Other Things I Haven’t Mastered

There’s currently painter’s tape circling my downstairs as a makeshift parade route. Solo cups stacked like castles in my dining room. Barbies and cars and trucks and legos and Easter eggs (long story) strewn about the house planning a coordinated campaign on unsuspecting adult feet (how do children ALWAYS avoid stepping on them?!).

My house is chaotic. Life is chaotic. What looked like a slowing down for all of us after my husband finished a big project at work turned into him coming down with Covid. The pandemic we somehow managed to avoid for 2 years hit our home this past weekend. I don’t like surprises, especially surprises of the plague variety.

So, while my husband spent Father’s Day isolated in the basement with a hastily made “Sry u got Covid” cake for company, I tried not to lose my shit and entertain my 3 children all weekend.

Did they add hours to the day because Sunday lasted for approximately 145 hours and the beginning of the week has brought little promise of anything different. I love routine. I love planning. This was not part of the plan.

When my world is chaotic I find myself seeking to control what I can. This morning I embarked on a frenzy of activity, but halfway through cleaning the dish disposal (unnecessary) I stopped myself. “What the hell am I doing?”

I’m exhausted. I don’t want to be exhausted. I don’t want that fatigue that reminds me so much of the days/weeks/months when my autoimmune disease was out of control. But the remedy for that isn’t more things to do. My body needs rest. No, my body deserves rest.

So I put down the Lemi Shine, picked up my weighted blanket and rested for an hour. I took a shower (my best thinking happens in the shower/I couldn’t remember the last time I showered) and remembered that the antidote to chaos isn’t trying to control it. In doing so I was allowing chaos to control me. A dirty sink isn’t going to kill me. My home strewn with solo cups, looking like a post frat-house party, isn’t going to kill me. It can wait.

What can’t wait is my own health. It’s so easy to forget that while I’m not sick with Covid, I am currently the sole caretaker and I have to take care of me as well. I can’t come last. I can choose to give in to the guilt and anxiety that a dirty house and growing to-do list gives me, or I can decide to not give those words power. Feelings aren’t facts (a corny, but true platitude). I can choose to honor my body and remember that all that stuff can wait till another day.

It can wait. And while it does I am going to enjoy my front sitting room surrounded by my plant bebes, listen to the older kids squealing (fighting? who knows) outside and enjoy a really good book.

I can rest.

-Meredith