Messy

Or, in other words, all over the place. One second happy, the other doubtful, then again laughing, then not sure of myself. Decisive about something, proceeding to doing what I think is best, then jumping on the wagon of "why-the-hell-did-I-think-it-was-a-good-idea"? Asking others for confirmation - did I do this wrong, did I do it right, did it help, did it make you mad? It is not even a roller-coaster, it is one gigantic mess, a puree-making machine, with me riding the moving parts, left, up, right, down, moving in circle, being chopped up, stiffening into a mass together, sticking to the sides, flying out of the bowl, forming air bubbles, switching from forming into butter to slipping into a running soggy mush. Ugh.

Not happy? Definitely. Why? Out of control. I don't like it when any part of my brain is not lined up on a perfect path, knows what it just did, what it is doing now, and what it is going to do next. Why should it? It shouldn't. It doesn't. It's not meant to be. But I have this idea of a perfect blue-print, where everything is pristine, every thought knows its place, every idea came from a logical conclusion, every emotion has a definition in the dictionary and is carried out exactly to the instructions on the label. Not an inch to the right. Not a note above the range. Not a word beyond the sentence. Not a step out of the circle. Perfect. Contained. Civilized. Controlled. Which it resists. Like a garden that's been left without a gardener for a month, only faster. The little paths between beds with flowers become covered with weeds, the perfectly rounded bushes sprout branches and break out of their shape, the manicured grass grows into chucks of unruly hair, and the whole place goes wild. Fast-forward. It becomes a jungle. When I wake up and try to enter it again, it's so overgrown that I can't find the entrance and have to break through the thorn of the rose bushes, scratching my wish to be contained. Polished. A masterpiece of self-control, self-therapy, self-education, self-drive. Out of the picture. That's not how it works, and I begin chopping.

I get so mad, I grab the weeds with my bare hands and pull. They resist. They whip me. They cut into my skin. I bleed but I persevere. I find the door in the fence, I clean out the fence, the border, the containment line, and I go around. I clean and clean all the way around, then on the inside. I go until I'm exhausted and can't move anymore. I fall on my knees, but I keep pushing myself forward. I dig with nails and pull out every little plant that doesn't belong, that was blown into my garden by some passing wind, that planted the seeds that I didn't approve of, that didn't ask my permission but simply happened. And then I stop. My hands simply don't move anymore, my legs don't move, my back aches, my eyes don't open. I fall asleep, dirty and hungry, but I sleep like a rock. I don't know how long it has been, but when I wake up, it's back to the jungle. The enormous effort it took to contain my own being - with it's thoughts and emotions and feelings - I have no energy for. It won. It's a mess. Im a mess. Or am I?

I forget that I look only at pieces, close, almost under a looking glass, like some obsessed scientist, trying to categorize types of leaves when I should really observe the forest as a whole. I rise up, and I begin to see patterns. There is beauty in them, in how they go around and destroy each other, and form each other again, from circles to spirals to lines to shapes. Wild yet perfectly massive, bushy yet perfectly full, out of boundaries yet perfectly vast. I understand that chaos is beautiful, that being messy is being alive. That allowing myself to grow doesn't mean following a predetermined path that manifests itself in one straight-forward line, like a never-ending highway. There is no road. There is only that - growth. Wild. All over the place. One step forward, two steps back. In a spiral, via a diagonal, in bits and pieces here, in long-hand there. Bulging on the outside, stretching and popping into holes on the inside. Bubbly. Sticky. Curled. Reaching into corners and climbing wallpaper, tearing it down, one perfect picture of a flower after another. A beautiful mess.

I think I'll keep going. I like the feeling. It's better than stretching. 

Photo by Nicki Varkevisser.