Mildew, Moons and Mental Breakthroughs

This week was weird. Not dramatic, just calm enough to make me suspicious.
I had no idea what to write until I sat with that strange stillness long enough to ask what it wanted.
That’s when I remembered the dream.

It made no sense, but still managed to call me out.
Not loud. Not ghoulish. Just quiet. Bizarre. Heavy.
The kind of dream that doesn’t fade. The kind that knows exactly where your oldest mess lives.
Not a nightmare. But it haunted me all the same.

Here’s what I saw:

A beat-up house on stilts, floating in the middle of the water.
Somewhere between Cape Cod charm and a Pablo Picasso fever dream.
Salt air. A faceless crowd at the bar just beyond the collapsing home.
That brand of déjà vu that makes you question whether you’re spiritually awakening or just sunburned and losing it.

The inside of the house was pure chaos.

Wet clothes draped over every chair.
Sweater vests chilling in the fridge. No explanation.
T-shirts clinging to the walls, stuck there like Harry’s spitballs from seventh-grade history.

I opened the washer, thinking I’d finally get ahead of the mess.
But it was already full.
Moldy laundry. Mushrooms.
Actual mushrooms.
A forager’s wet dream.

No matter how hard I tried to clean, the damp would not leave.
The clothes kept multiplying.
Even the shower was overflowing.

The mildew was so thick I could taste it behind my eyes. And somehow, it felt familiar.

Lately, the highlight reel of my twenties I’ve tried so hard to forget has been playing on repeat.

Fights I picked just to feel in control.

People I held onto long after they’d let go.

Places I stayed because unhappy felt safer than uncertain.

I didn’t think much of the dream at first. I laughed it off, mostly out of discomfort. But something about it lingered. And the more I sat with it, the more obvious it became.

That house? That mess? That was me.
Every pile of mildew-soaked clothing was a memory I tried to bleach out.
Every room, a version of myself I abandoned.

I’ve tried to clean it all up before. Literally.
Wellness routines. New haircuts. The occasional impulsive dye job.

But this dream didn’t ask me to fix anything.
Just to stand there. In the mess. And not run.
And I didn’t.

Since then, it’s been quiet. Not breakthrough quiet. Just still.
No shame spiral. No mental replays.
When a negative thought shows up, it doesn’t stick. It just passes.

It feels like I finally got a break from my own brain.
Like my nervous system unclenched and took the day off.

And for once, I didn’t overanalyze it.
I just let it be.

Which brings me to last night.
I sat down to write and… nothing.
No spiral. No angst. Just a weird sense of calm I couldn’t place.
I wrote down a few thoughts. They were quiet. Peaceful, even.
But they didn’t sound like me.

Then out of nowhere, it hit me.

A jolt through my body. And suddenly, it all made sense.

The dream. The mildew. The existential laundry spiral… all of it happened around the Full Moon in Sagittarius. The Strawberry Moon.

Of course it did.

And just like that, the universe pulled up a chair.

Full moons are about release. Sagittarius rules truth and growth.
So apparently my subconscious threw a full moon ritual and forgot to send me an invite.

No crystals. No incense. Just mildew and my dark, overly insightful subconscious.

That moldy washer held more truth than any self-help book I’ve ever scoured for answers.

I forgave myself. Or at least, I started to. And to be honest? I didn’t love it.

Forgiveness isn’t tidy. It doesn’t smell like lavender or come with fabric softener.

It’s more like putting fresh sheets on an already cluttered bed.

Not perfect.

But it’s a start.

I didn’t light sage. I didn’t whisper intentions to a leaf.
I stood in a moldy dream-laundry room, vaguely horrified, and said,
“Alright. I’m listening. What do you want from me this time?”

And weirdly enough,
It spoke back.