Every-thing is not perfect
This post is not meant to diagnose, treat, or save you from mental illness, if you or someone you love is in danger, please get help. You can text HOME to 741741 to be connected with a crisis counselor. I personally have. You can also call or text 988 for suicide and crisis help.
http://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts
Struggling with OCD is hard; it is known as obsessive compulsive disorder for a reason. It took me a long time to realize that I had it, and an even longer time to fight it, which I am still working on everyday. First of all, I love to organize and have things in order. Part of what makes me happy are things like: clean shinny bathrooms, dust free shelves, freshly mopped floors, organized drawers, closets that make sense, and décor that exhibits my taste. But life gets in the way of all that. I can’t have my house sparkling and shinning every day of the week, even if I am a stay at home mom. The kids aren’t the only thing that get in the way of my obsession with cleanliness and neatness. I have a laundry list of things I want to be in order and accomplish every day. Scheduling my time helps me with this struggle.
So I stay at home all day, my house should be perfect right? Where did this misconception come from? Who decided that the woman has to do all of household chores? I can say with pride that my husband/partner helps out with a lot, but I always feel like the weight falls back on me. I feel constricted, cramped, nervous, skin crawling, defeated, and pissed off when things aren’t in order and put away where they go. This is likely why I never feel a sense of accomplishment, because I am constantly fighting for perfection. I am continually trying to obtain the unobtainable. Not only do I like my house clean, but it also has to be in a particular order for me to feel whole.
Perfection is toxic, it has taken me years to realize that OCD is a compulsion disorder; meaning I have obsessions for my surroundings to be in a certain order and I have to carry out those compulsions. I have to make sure the candle on the table is in the exact right spot, or else I don’t feel “right” about it. There are so many things that can set me off. For example, coming home to a house that is completely in disarray. Now yes, we should all, to some point, take pride in our homes and want them to be somewhat cleanly. However, I am seeking a level of clean that no one person can obtain. People who have perfect homes like you see on Pinterest, in TV and movies, or on Tik-tok, have staged their houses that way. They don’t actually live like that. So why do I feel the need to try and obtain perfection?
Having something I can control is a part of who I am and so is being organized. I hate looking for an item, I love knowing where it is. For some reason, my brain works like a catalogue for all of the things I see in the world. My brain logs these things to memory easily, and I can recall where an item was the last time I saw it. This doesn’t work for everything, but it does for a lot. Now most of you might think this is a super power, to remember where everything is all the time. Well, it comes with its downfalls. For one thing, there are a lot of items, that I don’t need to locate, that live rent free in my head. It is completely unnecessary for me to know where all of my children’s toys are, especially because there are so many of them. So why do I know where all the hot wheels and barbies are? Why can I tell you the exact location of all the barbie shoes and racetrack pieces? Because I have a compulsion to keep these items in order.
I only hope and strive to not pass this terrible sickness onto my children. Yes, waking up each day and making your bed can aid in your mental health. Yes, keeping a clean home can keep a clear mind. But should it stress you out to tears? Should it make you feel defeated every day? Is everything always going to stay in the exact spot it is supposed to be in? NO! And it takes a lifetime to learn that perfection is not obtainable. There is not one person in the world or in history who can ever say that they achieved perfection 100%. Because everything is not perfect, it’s not meant to be.
I am still figuring this all out for myself, I am still trying to get to a point where I do not feel terrible about my house, my junk drawer, or my bed being unmade. It is a fine line between what makes me happy, and what is a compulsion that I feel I MUST accomplish or else end up in turmoil over. The best thing I can do for myself is throw my hands up and surrender. I have to keep learning that everything is not perfect. If I continue to look for the flaws, I will find them. If I continue to stress over trivial things, I will not get the experience life for what it truly can be. My OCD is lying to me; it tells me to “move this there” or “put this here” in order to create a sense of order and calm amongst the chaos in my brain. Do you ever feel like that? Like you are controlling what you can control, when things are out of control? Cleaning does that for me; it is a way to create order in my life amidst the chaos going on in my mind. Organizing is a way for me to sit down, calm down, and take my time carefully. The downside is: it doesn’t always stay like that and it’s not meant to. Life is supposed to be messy, that’s what makes it fun. You get flour all over the kitchen when you bake, but you get some beautiful, delicious creations.
My children are a big reason I feel like I can make a mess. They are the “perfect” example of why you shouldn’t care about all of the things in your house at once. Since they are only little for a short time, I make it a daily mission to teach them to pick up their things, but to also play with them. If you never make a mess, you will never make anything. Legos are a good example of this, and play dough, you have to spread everything all out, in order to make and create. S.T.E.A.M. teaches that too: messy experiments make amazing discoveries. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics).
So why can’t I make a mess? I really think it is because growing up, I wanted to make my parents happy. They seemed so unhappy in many ways, and cleaning was a way to make them proud of me. Still to this day, when my mother comes over, I want her to admire my house and how clean it is. I search for that pride within myself and can only find it when I am satisfied, which is seldom. With my Bipolar 1, I have depression and mania. While in mania, I can clean the house like a reverse tornado. However, when I am in depression, I feel like I can not do anything to make the chaos in my life better. Do any of you ever feel like that? If you do, I understand. The bar that I am trying to reach, feels so unobtainable sometimes that I figure: why even try? I was thinking of not even writing this post because my depression and OCD brain was convincing me that my thoughts are too jumbled to be able to make it right, to make it perfect. My brain tried to convince me that I had to have a perfect outline, sentence structure and argument to put a post out. My brain is a liar.
This blog isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. It doesn’t have to make sense, and neither does my life or my home. I just have to keep reminding myself.
-A Manic Monday
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