In Times of Great Grief I Make Big Messes for Myself to Clean Up

Anyone else?

My environment is a window to my mind.

As a very small child I understood the connection between the chaos of my mind and the chaos of my environment. How one impacted the other.

Whenever I could, I kept my room as tidy as possible, a place for everything and everything in its place. My tidiness was early OCD but few parents or teachers complain about kids who are TOO tidy, so it went unnoticed.

Pulling out my eyelashes also went unnoticed until I ran out of my own and started trying to pull out my infant brother’s while he slept. My mom got wise to me then. And thought I was crazy. She had zero compassion or use for that particular trauma response. She also hated that I bit my nails.

But in tidiness, she and I were bonded. It brought us both comfort to live in environments that were tidy and nice to behold. Organized. Orderly. Matching. Color coordinated. Clean. Bright.

The homes we lived in revealed how much my dad felt the same.

My father didn’t seem to possess the tidiness trauma r…