It’s you. It’s always been you. You’re as good as it gets for me. Without you, I’m a shell of a person. I realize that I can’t live - actually live - if you’re not with me a hundred percent. If you are not in the correct state to lead me. I cannot know what is right if you don’t. I can’t get my shit together if you don’t. Without you everything loses meaning. Everything I do is influenced by you. Of the three pillars you and I have, you are arguably the most important. And if you have the best interest in yourself, you will have the best interest for me too. And therefore I need you to do the simple thing for me, Chris. And simple it is, but at the same time the most difficult thing you’ll ever have to do. I need you to get our shit together. I need you to keep your house in order.
The Pressure Cooker
When something needs to be dealt with, you normally postpone it to later. Conflict. Confrontation. A wild thought. You tell yourself that you’ll do it when the time is right. When you have time to. Even if the thing will take you less than five minutes, and you know it would probably be easier if you dealt with it there and then. No. You push it forward. And you do this again. And again. And again. Until the list of things to be done gets so long. And now the small thing from before becomes worrying. Because you worry that if you start with that one thing, it will lead to a cascade of other things that need to be dealt with. A cascade of things that will take forever to deal with. A cascade of things you are afraid of. Pain. Fear. Anxiety. While they were once minute and easy, they have grown into something big and scary. And so you postpone it again. And without knowing it, it builds up, causing a more insidious pain, fear and anxiety. The mental load gets heavier and heavier each day. A pressure cooker that is getting hotter by the moment, waiting to pop.
Clean Your Room.
Get in the practice of keeping your house in order. It’s a simple thing. The person who said it - the person who has helped you quite a lot - has gotten a lot of stick for it. Because it seemed to be that he was simplifying things a little bit too much. But goddamn was the man right. There’s a reason people in the military are trained on the basics. Make your bed. Shine your shoes. You have tried it. And you get why he said to start with your room. Because its fucking hard. But you have seen the benefits. By keeping your house in order, you have gotten to know where everything is. And that, by extension, gives you access to everything you use regularly and quickly. You get to identify exactly what’s actually missing. And the mere identification of what’s missing is extremely important. You get to know exactly where to find the missing thing. A house in order declutters. And by doing so, opens up your mental palace. So that you see more clearly what you need. And what you don’t.
Change Your World
It’s not going to be easy, keeping your house in order. Not at all. I fact, I dare you to do it for a week. Not a year. Not a month. A week. Before you go about ‘changing the world,’ just keep everything in order for a week. See how hard it is. And when you realize that it’s not easy, remember that ‘changing the world’ is going to be infinitely harder. Sometimes life will seem to not have anything for you. You will sometimes think that it just wants to fuck you. And when it does, remember that this might probably be the single biggest thing you could do for yourself. When you are so overwhelmed, the simplest thing might just be picking up that sock that has been on the floor for three days. It might be washing the cup that has been in the sink all day. It might be simply making your bed. Change your world, and maybe you can change someone else’s.
Of Bad and Good Visitors
Remember what your sister said. ‘Make your house somewhere you are proud and eager to go back to at the end of the day.’ You can’t ever be afraid to go home. The day you are, you have failed yourself. I want to look forward to talking to you. But I can’t do that if you are a mess. You are one of the biggest investments I will ever make. And you are an investment that I am going to continue making. Sure, something will break sometimes. Something will get forgotten. You may get a visitor. A bad visitor, from time to time. One that breaks you. One that leaves you in pain. Don’t let them stay too long though. Make sure to deal with the situation. Pick up the pieces after they have left. Throw them away. Get your house back in order. Sometimes you will get a good visitor. One that shows you what you’ve been missing. If they are staying, let them know that you like keep your house in order. And they will too.
The Drawer and the Sink
Refuse the temptation to shove things in the drawer of ‘problems I don’t want to deal with now’, where they can’t be seen. Because every time you do this, the drawer gets more full. It gets progressively harder to close. And eventually, the drawer stops closing, and the clothes spill over. The more you do this, the more it will come back to bite you in the future. At some point, you are going to have to look in that drawer. To find that sock that you need. And it’s going to be easier when the drawer isn’t so full of unmanaged shit. Every once in a while, open the drawer, examine its contents, and clean it out. Once in a while, go under the sink. Open the outlet. Let the gunk out. Don’t be too disgusted by it. It’s your gunk. It will stink you up for a while. But if you clean the gunk, and you open your windows for fresh air, the stink will be gone sooner rather than later. And from then on, the cleaning process will get a lot easier. Everything will flow easier. And you’ll be happier for it.
Intermissions of Unhappiness
‘This seems like a lot of work! Why do it?’ I hear you ask me. Well, it’s simple. Because you’ve seen worse. You’ve been worse. At the same time, you’ve seen what better looks like. And having seen better, you can’t unsee it. Every time you beat yourself up, it’s because you know you know better. And so you are going to try. You are going to try, for fuck’s sake. You’re not going to be perfect. That race for perfection is a futile one, filled with pain. You don’t want to fall into that trap. But you are going to try to be better. Better than you were yesterday. You fail. Again. And again. And again. But when you do, remember that your happiness requires intermissions of unhappiness. It’s okay. Try again. Because you are as good as it gets for me. It’s either you or nothing. You’re the one person that will always validate me. I can’t live without you. So get your shit together. Get your house in order. Do this for me, and I’ll try and be the best that I can be for you.