I like everything fitting very nicely into perfect little boxes. Everything has a place, and belongs in its place.

This is both a literal and figurative analogy in my life, which I first discussed in a post last week – Accepting a Messy Life. Literally, every physical item has a place in my house. Figuratively, everything has a place in my brain and logic always dictates my decisions.
From a physical perspective, I am not saying my house is perfectly clean and organized, but I would venture the guess, that my house is more organized then 90% of other homes with the exception of 2 spaces – my husband’s home office and the garage. I am not responsible for either of these spaces, and for the most part I accept that it is not my place to clean and organize his office (although, when he asks for help, I’m right in there with my label maker and a smile, kind of like a giddy kid in a candy store). However, the spaces I am responsible for are incredibly organized. You can even walk into my basement and see an extremely organized storage room and my bookshelf (oh, how I love my books and bookshelf), it may appear unorganized at first glance. But that is intentional, and if you look closely, you will realize that each little cubby, contains like genres stacked behind the first row, sometimes 3 rows deep. The leaning books, have been arranged to lean to add variation to an otherwise overwhelming shelf. The few non-book cubbies have been arranged to appear chaotic, but rather each one has been strategically placed to reduce the overwhelming repetition of books. My bookshelf is controlled chaos.

I love to create order out of chaos.

I completely acknowledge that I’m neurotic when it comes to organization. And I share how organized my house is, because it’s the best analogy I can think of to share how organized my mind is. Things and thoughts often twirl around up there in my brain, but, at the end of the day my thought processes and decisions are governed by the logic I assign to each unique situation. Rarely, if ever, do I make a decision based on anything other than fact and logic, which of course means I greatly struggle in highly emotional situations because in these circumstances I cannot assign logic in a typical way. Decisions become much harder for me.

So, when I was challenged to accept a messy life due to our failed pregnancies, I realized that for me, this is probably more about accepting a messy mental life beyond just accepting our babies and our miscarriages as creating messiness in our lives. This is bigger. This is about my entire outlook on life and my attempts to live a perfect life. (Maybe, just maybe, this whole RPL experience will force me to learn a bit more about myself and grow in ways I never anticipated or expected).

Part of living messy means that I need to:

Accept that I cannot control everything.

Accept that not everything can fit nicely into one of my little boxes and/or categories.

Accept that things will not always go to plan, no matter how much I try to force the execution of said plan.

Accept that not every single day will be perfect.

Accept that there will be bumps in the road and I don’t always have to smile through them, I just have to get through them.

Again, acceptance is not always easy. But, part of living messy is accepting just that. Knowing that I may feel at peace with everything one day, but I may not the next. And understanding that this uncertainty is okay, and may even eventually become a blessing if I let it.

Clearly, I don’t want a messy life, in fact I have done everything in my power since the age of 14 to ensure that I am living an organized and logical life – I do things to appear perfect to the outside world, even if I am struggling through it. Heck, I cannot even have a mental breakdown without trying to control it and make it appear perfect to the world. So, why should I accept this messy approach to my life now?

I’m told, I should accept messy because life is messy. Life doesn’t always go to plan, not everything fits into perfect order, not everything has a box, and not every box can slide nicely onto a shelf.

But, I want it to and I have a tendency to make everything fit into nice boxes with pretty little labels (or rather, in my case, I fit everything into Tupperware containers because what if our basement ever floods?)

I of all people should understand that life doesn’t always go as planned – my mom and sister died much too young, we’ve lost 5 babies through miscarriages. But, I know for me, accepting messy is not going to come easily.

So, as I actively work to accept our undefined future, I am also working to accept that I cannot assign logic to the situation.

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This is a follow up post to one that I posted last week. Click here to see the original: Accepting a Messy Life

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