There is a kind of chaos that doesn’t look like chaos.
It looks like an Easter Sunday.
Chocolate wrappers. Roast dinners. Children older now, sleeping longer, the house quieter in the morning than it used to be.
We went back to bed.
That part felt like something I should hold onto — the softness of it — but even then there was a hum underneath. Eerily soft. Just there. Like a thought waiting its turn.
I felt present.
And also slightly… elsewhere.
This is what it feels like inside me right now:
A busy mind in a body that has slowed down without my permission.
I can see everything that needs done. The mess, the edges of things left unfinished, the small piles that quietly grow into something bigger. I notice all of it.
And still, I can’t move toward it.
Not because I don’t care.
Not because I’m lazy.
But because something in me has said: not like this. It won’t allow me.
This week I have neuropsychology.
I’m still waiting on MRI results.
My aunt starts radiotherapy tomorrow. Three weeks.
We don’t talk about what that might mean out loud, but it sits there anyway.
Money is tight.
Tighter than I’d like to admit.
The dogs ran away when the wind took part of the fence.
Forty-five minutes of searching, of imagining roads they don’t understand — of that quiet panic that quickly grips.
They came back by themselves while we searched.
But my body hasn’t quite caught up with that ending yet.
On Friday I drank.
I don’t drink the way I used to.
Months, in between. We have a different relationship now.
But I’m noticing something new — or maybe something I didn’t pay attention to before.
I don’t feel it happening. The effects.
There’s no gentle slope. No awareness building.
Just suddenly… I’m there.
And with everything else already fragile — memory, cognition, mood — it doesn’t feel worth the cost.
Not in a dramatic way.
Just a quiet knowing: this doesn’t belong here anymore.
So this is what I do instead.
I light candles in the middle of the day.
Not for atmosphere. For grounding.
I move my body without structure.
Not exercise. Just small, intuitive movements — loosening fascia under the surface — my body trying to remind me how to live in it again.
I breathe. Tummy breaths. Deep.
Sometimes I lie down when there are dishes in the sink.
Not in defeat. In refusal.
This is not a time for martyrdom.
Outside, the blossom trees have been confused.
There was a snowstorm. Storm Dave — named, like it’s something familiar, something that comes and goes with a personality of its own.
The petals held on through it… pink against white…and then less than an hour later, the sun came out like nothing had happened.
Light on blossom.
Soft again.
No apology. No explanation.
I think that’s where I am.
Not broken.
Not fixed.
Just… in between weather systems.
My mind is still fast. It’s busy. Often chaotic.
But my body has slowed the whole operation down.
And maybe that slowing is not failure.
Maybe it’s the only way I can stay.
I don’t have the capacity to turn this into something neat.
To package it, and present it in a way that brings resolution.
This is just how it is right now.
Lit candles.
Unwashed dishes.
A mind that won’t stop.
A body that won’t start.
And somewhere in the middle of that…surrounded by notebooks, journals, notes on loose paper sheets — is the dream of a completed manuscript.
I am still here.
For those new here: I live with autism, ADHD, PMDD and FND. These are part of the landscape beneath my writing, even when they’re not named.
