The mess I loved: why the nervous system practices chaos

A sense of safety in the just-in-cases

Do you have a drawer where things you don’t know what to do with get thrown in?

There’s a sense of safety in that. The drawer that holds all the just-in-cases.

There’s also a sense of overwhelm. Because after some years, the drawer barely opens. It’s jammed every time you try to, and afterwards you just want to slam it shut and not deal with it until the next time.

Maybe you have more than one of those. Or a closet for that purpose. Or even a room.

I threw out a lot of shit this past week. Cleaned out drawers. Closets. Rooms. I’ve lived in this house for 17 years. It took me through the past lives it has seen. The many versions of myself that existed.

Who I was when I first read a book with ideas like this. What life was like when I wrote in this notebook. The nights that used to go on forever when I wore my hair like this, jewelry like this.

Ghosts of what this house used to look like. I got rid of the last couple of whiskey bottles I still used as vases. How I used to collect them like they were a point of pride. The first string of Christmas lights Noah helped me put up in the living room, the first time he came over, and the smudges they’d left on the wall.

Practicing the noise to avoid the quiet

I took down photos for the first time in 17 years. Since I moved in, I’ve had photos stuck on my walls, on cork boards, strung up across surfaces. I used to need these reminders that I wasn’t alone. I needed to feel held by a slur of images and clutter of things - random mismatched knickknacks I’d collect from thrift stores thinking this is what would keep me safe. Full. That they’d keep me from my own mind.

My clouded, loud, scary mind. The holes in my heart where untreated wounds had torn from.

But I realized this time coming home that my mind isn’t like that anymore.

Up until the past few months I’m sure I believed it would always be that way.

That I needed every tool I could find to quiet it.

But when the quiet is practiced, it stays. It stops being such a chore. It starts being the default.

The nervous system learns by practicing

The nervous system doesn’t learn by thinking, understanding, or knowing. It learns by practicing.

It learns that everything that is held onto as “just-in-cases” is extra weight. The old stories, the old identities, the old beliefs that keep us jammed up. Hard to open. Hard to close.

I finally felt safe enough to let these things go. I put the photos in albums, to be enjoyed from time to time, without the need to have them tell me I’m loved anymore. I feel it now. I let myself.

I trimmed back my plants, turned a lot of them into little baby plants. To start their own thing, grow how they’d like. Unattached.

Spring returns every year. Move with it. Reassess, recalibrate, rearrange.

If you looked in that just-in-case drawer, closet, room - what would you find?

What noise do you keep to distract from the noise in your head?

What noise do you keep in your life to distract you from the noise in your head? What mess do you tolerate so the mess inside can stay the same?

—————

Stop managing the stress and start changing the response.

If you are ready to shift your physiology out of survival and into the quiet, tell me what you’re practicing.