The Magic in the Mess
My last blog didn’t come easily, and honestly, I think it showed. Walter staged his quiet rebellion against the litter box, and instead of brushing it off, I went straight into worry. Was I doing something wrong, or was something wrong with him? In the grand scheme of life, it was such a small thing, one cat refusing one box, yet it rattled me. It sent me down a rabbit hole, writing and overthinking, searching for meaning in the mess. Why do the smallest things always manage to shake me the most?
The irony wasn’t lost on me. I chose “control” as my theme and then tried to wrestle the entire blog into submission, forcing my words into neat lines while calling it free flowing. That’s not usually how I write. Normally, I let the chaos spill out first and only later shape it into something coherent. This time I reversed the process, and the result felt more like performance than truth.
Even the jokes I added afterward felt like a late-night show’s cue card, a way to mask the strain behind a punchline. Once I realized how hard I was pushing the words instead of letting them breathe, the spiral began. Fraud. Flat. Fake. Had I lost my voice entirely? But beneath it, something else was forming: a quieter realization about control and how tightly I cling to it when I’m most afraid to release it.
The more I tried to mold the post into a picture-perfect think piece with a neat story arc, the more I started to see the same pattern everywhere in my life. Control makes me feel safe. I rarely let myself lose it, because I fear everything will fall apart. But sometimes I wonder if falling apart is the only way to uncover the truth, or even the magic, hidden in the mess.
Take writing, for example. I’ve submitted original pieces to a handful of contests and literary magazines, only to check my email compulsively, as if refreshing it one more time might change the outcome. If I can control the narrative, even if it’s just my inbox, it tricks me into believing everything else will hold together. Control feels comforting. Until the email doesn’t come. Then disappointment sets in, and suddenly I’m not the one controlling the inbox. The inbox is controlling me.
It’s the same loop with perfectionism. I’ve never thought of myself as naturally gifted at anything. I’m not saying that for sympathy; it’s just how I’ve always felt. I wasn’t a prodigy in sports, or brilliant in school, or the type of person things just came easily to. And when I didn’t understand something right away, frustration set in fast and I would often give up on it.
I remember struggling with reading comprehension as a kid, going over the same paragraph again and again without it sinking in. Eventually, I leaned on SparkNotes more than I’d like to admit, which left me with a quiet belief that I just wasn’t smart enough. The truth was simpler: I wasn’t putting in the effort, mostly out of fear of failure, both literal and figurative. Those nuns didn’t exactly grade with compassion.
But instead of facing that, I coped with the insecurity by demanding impossibly high standards from myself and then tearing myself down when I couldn’t reach them. I never expected to be the best, but I still expected perfection. It only shows how easy it is to mistake self-punishment for self-improvement.
The problem, of course, is that perfectionism always fails. No one can be perfect all the time. And when I inevitably fall short, the voice of “not enough” returns, playing the same track I’ve heard for years. The cycle continues, as relentless as refreshing an inbox that never updates.
Even writing this post, I caught myself taking breaks because it felt easier than risking writing something bad. Whenever I write about personal vulnerabilities, I’ll find any excuse to wander off. That’s how sneaky perfectionism works: it convinces you not to start unless success is guaranteed. But that guarantee doesn’t exist. Some drafts bomb spectacularly. It’s unavoidable.
And it doesn’t stop with writing. Control shows up in my smallest daily habits too. Like most things, it traces back to childhood. I had very little control then, like most of us, and when discomfort hits now, my younger self’s coping mechanisms kick in. If I feel uneasy, I start hunting for things I can control: the number of steps on my morning walk (at least 3,000, or 10,000 by day’s end feels impossible), how I cook and tenderize my chicken (crucial, otherwise I won’t eat it), taking my supplements at 4:30 so they digest before dinner, the exact time I start winding down so my sleep cycle stays intact, even when I go to the bathroom (TMI, but true). The more out of control I feel, the longer the list gets. And if one thing slips, well, good luck to anyone standing between me and my 4:30 supplements.
When life spills outside the “litter box,” the anxiety kicks in and the soundtrack starts blaring. I catastrophize. I spiral into scenarios that will probably never happen but still take up way too much real estate in my head.
This shows up in other parts of my life too. Take birth control, for example. I’ve wanted to stop for years. I know it’s not great for the body, but it keeps my hormonal acne in check. And not just a few pimples, but full-blown cystic acne that never relents. One would fade, and three more would appear in its place.
I tried going off it in 2021, and within weeks my acne came back with a vengeance. I picked at it, hoping it would go away, but that only made it worse. Thinking about it still gives me a pit in my stomach. It felt like the ultimate form of chaos, my body begging for a chance to regulate itself while I completely lost control. I couldn’t handle it, so I shut my body down and covered it with a Band-Aid. But that’s what control so often is: a quick fix, a surface patch, something to make the chaos look contained without ever healing what’s underneath.
Handing my skin over to “the universe” feels impossible. I know the time will come when I’ll have to let go and let God, but right now, I’m not there yet.
I wish I could end this with a tidy call to action or a triumphant story about how I’ve mastered surrender. The truth is, I haven’t and I probably never will completely. Maybe the lesson is simple: the mess isn’t always a crisis. Sometimes it’s life asking you to loosen your grip, to trust that not everything needs controlling, and to see that even in the unraveling, what matters has a way of holding.
And if Walter has taught me anything, it’s this: control was never mine to begin with.
