I Was Just Going to…

I went out to the garage to do one thing.

I no longer remember what it was.

Four hours later, I was done.

I had turned the entire garage upside down. Thrown things out, sorted, decluttered, cleaned AND rearranged the furniture. Me, all 121 pounds of questionable muscle mass, hauling furniture around like I was training for Sweden’s Strongest Woman.

Furniture that had previously been on one side of the garage apparently needed to be on the other.

Why?

I honestly couldn’t tell you.

But at the time, it was extremely important.

About an hour after I disappeared, my husband presumably started wondering where I’d gone. He came out to the garage, stood in the middle of the chaos and silently looked around.

Then he looked at me.

Calmly, warmly, he said:

“Demons, sweetheart?”

“Yeah. Quite a few today, unfortunately.”

He smiled, turned around and headed back inside.

“Let me know if and when you need me.”

He knows that’s not going to happen.

But it’s a lovely gesture.

After 27 years together, he also knows that the best thing he can do in situations like this is leave me alone. Partly because I don’t want help. Partly because there is absolutely no way he could help me.

His ADHD brain would take one look at the chaos, realize there was no logical system to it and probably solve the entire problem by throwing everything away.

You see, it’s very important to him that things are where things are supposed to be.

I work a little differently.

I also think things should be where things are supposed to be.

The problem is that apparently, I haven’t decided where that is.

So I spend a surprising amount of my life looking for things I KNOW I put “right here.”

They are never there.

Ever.

This is just one of the many new hobbies my brain has picked up over the past few years.

Left and right is another one.

If I’m driving and need to turn left or right, I get it right every time. I have absolutely no trouble knowing which is which.

But if my husband tells me to go right, I go left.

Every time.

And vice versa.

I am wrong 100% of the time.

He has even tried to outsmart the system.

“Okay. Whatever you instinctively think — do the opposite.”

Doesn’t help.

Somehow, my brain manages to take that information, process it, and still produce the wrong answer.

It has gone from frustrating to funny. At this point, I barely have the energy to react.

My brain and I simply don’t always agree anymore.

When my stress and anxiety increase, I need to work with my body and my hands. It isn’t a conscious decision.

It just happens.

Like the garage.

I was going to do ONE thing.

The problem with starting a project like this is that one task very often creates another task, which creates another task, which somehow spins off into yet another one.

I’m going to move a box.

Then I realize the box needs sorting.

While sorting the box, I find something that belongs somewhere else.

When I go to put it somewhere else, I discover that THAT place needs organizing too.

And so it goes.

Four days later, theoretically, an entire room could be freshly painted and completely redecorated.

That’s not even much of an exaggeration.

The other problem is that once I start, I have to finish the same day.

Normal people might do half, save their bodies, and continue the next day.

I find these people fascinating.

If you only knew how many times I’ve turned some part of the house completely upside down, only to find myself standing in the middle of the wreckage thinking:

Clara, how the hell are you going to get yourself out of THIS one?

But I do.

I finish it.

I do think I’ve gotten “better.”

And I’m using the word better very generously here.

I’ve started putting things on my to-do list instead of doing everything immediately. I try to take a step back and schedule them for a time when I have more energy and can actually finish what I start.

That does not mean this is what always happens.

Absolutely not.

Because burnout, brain fog and anxiety aren’t going to disappear just because I’m pissed off about them.

I can keep fighting a brain that doesn’t work the way it once did, or I can try to get to know the version I have now.

Apparently, she needs slightly different rules.

A little more patience.

And, apparently, a to-do list.

The garage looks great, though.

I still have absolutely no idea what I went out there to do.