Reclaiming My Chaos

Reclaiming My Chaos

“This whole time that I was thinking of writing an article about chaos, I had decided it was a negative term. But my chaos is the best thing about me. “

Kelly Samuel

Artwork by Anna Morrissey

*Googles* ‘Morning routine’ - About 2,970,000,000 results (0.36 seconds), ‘Evening Routine’ - About 1,510,000,000 results (0.53 seconds). I have been on the internet for over a decade and an avid YouTube viewer for most of that. I have probably watched every single morning routine video on the platform, hoping that one will have that magical secret to a new me - a transformed life through the order in which I wash my face and eat breakfast every morning.

I don’t think I have ever had a morning routine for more than two days in a row. And yet I can’t stop watching them. In fact, I do not think I have ever had a sleep schedule last longer than a week. In the past two years, I do not think there has been a single week that I continuously went to sleep before midnight. I don’t glamorise this life, or recommend it. But it is the only life I know how to live in.

AGE: 6 MONTHS. My mother, whose biological clock is more stable than time itself, has stopped sleeping because her baby wakes up every 3 hours, is always crying, and never naps. Ever. My dad reportedly takes me on car rides every evening so that the rocking movements will put me to sleep. I have come into the world choosing violence through insomnia.

But this story isn’t about sleep. It is about the hours in between. 

AGE: 7 YEARS OLD. My year four teacher doesn’t like me because I daydream too much. I learn that daydreaming is disruptive to the people around me, it is wrong - it gets me into trouble. I shouldn’t daydream.

It is not so much a story, as an unlearning. A story implies a beginning, a middle, and an end - with peaks and climaxes. This is neither of these things - simply an untangling, a long, slow, overdue realisation - spoiler: it has been resolved. Sort of. I have found peace - for the most part. Peace in chaos. 

AGE: 12 YEARS OLD. I am underperforming in my exams because I cannot complete them in the allocated time. I ask my school what the process for getting extra time on exams is - they say you can’t unless you have a diagnosed learning disability.  I don’t, I don’t think so at least - the problem must be me.

AGE: 15 YEARS OLD. I am miserable in school. I don’t have any clue what subjects to choose for next year, or what career path I want to take. I feel pressured to decide, on life outcomes I know nothing about, that all seem more miserable than the next one. Choosing between two 9-5 torture experiments it feels like. More of what I am doing now. I am waiting for the day that I graduate - I feel that my life has no purpose because I am living to kill time. 

*Googles* Revenge Bedtime Procrastination: “people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late-night hours”. Control is an interesting word here - arguably what all human decisions are in some way based on. So is chaos a means of control in itself?

AGE: 19 YEARS OLD. At uni now. Still miserable, for different reasons, irrelevant to this particular story. But now I have a level of control. I am told these are the best years of my life. The most freedom I will ever have - club nights on a Tuesday, 9ams on a Wednesday. I am constantly overwhelmed, and constantly have emotional breakdowns when minor things do not go as I planned. Lost my sunglasses, in London of all places - 2-week depressive episode. The printer isn’t working properly - cause for a panic attack. I have joined about 15 societies, I try to maintain a social life, and I definitely do ALL of my readings on time (sense the sarcasm). I do not understand how people around me seem to be on top of things, and how they have it together.  To thrive in university is to be a master of chaos. I was simply drowning in it. There was freedom to choose but the pressure to conform within it.

*Googles* Highly Sensitive Person: “ a subset of the population who are high in a personality trait known as sensory-processing sensitivity, or SPS. Those with high levels of SPS display increased emotional sensitivity, stronger reactivity to both external and internal stimuli—pain, hunger, light, and noise—and complex inner life.” I have come to the conclusion that I am a highly sensitive person and yet I crave chaos. Of course, this means that most of the time I am a frazzled mess.

AGE: 21 YEARS OLD. I pay way too much money to a fancy meditation centre to formally learn the skill of Vedic meditation. Despite the pretentiousness, It changes everything. The year that comes after that is the best year of my life. I am no longer overwhelmed by the world, and I fall into all of the things I love doing - I sign up for way too many things and somehow do them all. I am living as if it is my last year on earth. Little did I know… the thing was about to happen. 

AGE: 22 YEARS OLD. The THING happens. The March 2020 thing. Suddenly the word ‘chaos’ is both an understatement and an overstatement. I spend 3 months in complete confinement - no structure in my life, not a singular routine - no societal conventions of order. From my outfits to my living habits, to my (lack of) routine - everything is completely chaotic and completely serene. It is the most spiritually fulfilling few months of my life. Nobody is watching me and so I have nobody’s expectations of normality to live up to. I can be as messy, as chaotic, and as insane as I want to be. Because none of it matters. As long as I stick to my deadlines (which I asked for every extension under the sun), as long as I eventually submit every assignment, I have succeeded. And I did - somehow - against all odds - get my degree.

AGE 23. Back in the real world - post-pandemic, post-graduation, limbo. I eventually get a job. More accurately, I have 3 jobs. Two of these pay me, one is the hobby I hope one day becomes a job. I have been described as “the most organised person I have ever met” by friends and coworkers. I work as an EA, a Producer, and a Project Manager. Yet, chaos tends to follow me in big and small ways.

We are in the present moment now. The beginning, middle, and end of this story, this unfolding, this realisation. Because it was a moment that gave an answer to all the questions I didn’t know I had.

Why am I so dysfunctional? Why are things so difficult, and why does nobody else find things as difficult as I seem to find them? I believe in my intellectual abilities, in my practical skills, in my judgment, logic, and creativity. And yet I feel completely dysfunctional. Why am I constantly overwhelmed, and yet constantly craving more chaos?

It is the simple things I find the hardest. Being on time, focusing on one thing for more than five minutes, and remembering where I left things. Holding a conversation, not interrupting people, not losing my train of thought mid-sentence. Always being late, unless I devote all my energy to not being, finding the effort of getting to my 9-5 job more gruelling than the job itself. Having terrible time management skills despite being extremely organised. Listening to audio without a visual accompaniment. Being patient. How am I simultaneously the most organised person I know, and the least together?

My brother was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago. He says to me: “the reason hyper fixation occurs is, for the ADHD brain there is a higher need for external dopamine stimulation. So, let's say an activity doesn't cause much stimulation it's almost painful to get through. But if something causes enough interest whether it be something like substance abuse, sugar, or hopefully something healthier like intellectual stimulation, that thing can be done to excess.” These things run in families, right? Do I need a diagnosis to validate my dysfunctionality? 

Two weeks ago, I attended a panel discussion around accessibility in the arts, led by some disabled artists. An actor called Lydia April says: “help people based on their needs rather than a diagnosis”. It took me a while for this to sink in. But this sentence was enough to change everything for me. 

While self-diagnosis can be extremely dangerous, that is not what this realisation was about. The realisation is not, that I have ADHD - that is still unknown, as ADHD in the way we conceptualise it is a manmade diagnostic tool. The realisation was, that I have needs that deserve to be met. 

I am not ‘dysfunctional’, because I feel the urge to wander. All of the things I criticised myself for, were just a symptom of a mind that is driven by intrinsic rather than extrinsic desires - something that our modern society, with its rules and rigidities, deems as a bad thing. How I can be so absorbed in something, I forget that time is passing. How I can connect seemingly unrelated concepts to each other. How my thoughts and ideas come at the cost of me staying on track. This, to the observer, is chaos. But in my own way, following my inner dialogue and seeing where that takes me, even if it changes five times per minute, is the most orderly thing I can do. And it underpins all the qualities I love most about myself. 

I decided to prioritise my needs. As a TikTok wonderfully put it, I started treating myself as if I have ADHD - simple things: If I felt the need to fidget or stand up during long zoom meetings, I didn’t dismiss this need out of fear of seeming unprofessional. If halfway through a task, I want to do house chores or change tasks or something else comes up that I am more inspired to do at that moment, I go for it. If I feel more focused and alert during crazy times of the day, that is when I do my work - even if people might question what time zone I am currently in. It hasn’t escaped me just how obvious the solutions seem now - not a new routine, not another “self-care” product, nothing you could buy on Goop - just responding to my most basic desires: using paper instead of a screen, standing up to think, taking work breaks - the small freedoms that you only have if you CAN set your own routine.

Working with the chaos rather than fighting against it, as I had unconsciously been doing my whole life. 

Rather than trying to fit into the mould society has given me, I stopped trying to live up to the idea of success that the 9-5 workday has decided for us. The intuition I had at 16, about not wanting a 9-5 job, was because I knew I would never thrive under such rigid circumstances. I thrive in chaos. Of course, I am extremely lucky to work from home and have employers who are happy for me to work flexible hours. It is ironic when, as a producer, it is my actual job to create structure in chaos - perhaps because I have learned to be good at it.  And even more ironic that my motivation for focus then comes intrinsically when I don’t force it.

The patriarchy, capitalism, modern society - blame it on what you will. But somewhere, someone decided that simple human needs, that hurt no one and make our lives easier, do not deserve to be met, and we all blindly went along with it.  This whole time that I was thinking of writing an article about chaos, I had decided it was a negative term. But my chaos is the best thing about me. 

‘Chaos’ - About 3,630,000,000 results (0.58 seconds). Chaos wins.