Who Are You Choosing To Be

We got home late last night after an eight-hour drive home from a barrel race in Oklahoma.

I was SO ready to be home.

Hot shower. My own bed. All those little comforts you miss after being gone.

But I was also a little curious about what we were coming home to because we had left our 13-year-old son home alone for about 24 hours.

He's a good kid. Responsible. Trustworthy.

But he's also a teenage boy.

Hello messy room, cups left everywhere and all things dirty teenage boy.

And I am a mom who likes things neat, orderly and you know, "my way".

I've lived in this body for 48 years. I know my patterns.

I travel. I come home. The house isn't left to "my standards." I get pissy with the humans who left it that way.

Needless to say, no one is ever super excited for me to get home. 😂

So on the drive home I had already been reminding myself that the house might not look the way I wanted it to.

And that was okay.

I had an entire day to get things back the way I like them.

There was no emergency.

Except apparently there was.

We got home and my son mentioned that the dogs had been acting weird and throwing their food bowls around the kitchen floor.

Well that's odd.

I walked into the kitchen and noticed the food bowl right away.

Right next to the BONE DRY water bowl.

Oh my God.

We filled it and both dogs drank like they hadn't had water in a year.

That is me being dramatic, I'm sure.

But how long had that bowl been empty?!

And as my son reminded me, "You didn't tell me I had to give them water."

OMG.

So that's how my whole come home and don't make the humans who live here hate you plan started.

At 11 o'clock at night.

I stayed up and picked up a little because I knew what the next day looked like.

Unpack from this trip. Bills. Work. Laundry. Groceries. Start packing for the next trip in two days.

I figured if I could get a few things done before bed, the next morning would feel a little less hectic.

Except I woke up the next morning and immediately felt... hectic.

I got my son off to school, came home and started looking around.

Dirty dishes. Trash needed to go out. Couch cushions needed to be fluffed. Counters and tables needed to be wiped. Bags needed to be unpacked.

And I know myself.

I don't calmly start at one end of the house and work my way through it.

I start moving faster.

A little here. A little there.

There isn't enough time.

I need to get all of this done so I can get to everything else I need to do.

And I caught myself.

Because I've actually worked on this particular pattern for a long time.

There was a time when a messy house didn't just mean I preferred my house clean.

It meant something about everyone else.

They're slobs.

Why is everything always left for me?

How can they live like this?

Why am I the only one who cares?

I've gotten a lot better at catching those stories.

I like my house a certain way.

Period.

I can put the couch cushions back where I like them because I like them there without making someone else an asshole because they don't care where the couch cushions are.

But that morning I realized there was another part of this.

I wasn't blaming everyone else.

But I was still running around my house like a lunatic.

Fast. Frantic. Rushing from one thing to another.

And that's when the lyrics from a song I listen to sometimes popped into my head.

Who are you choosing to be?

Oh.

Right.

Because this wasn't who I wanted to be either.

I want to be a woman who can handle her life.

And life isn't always going to be exactly how I want it.

Sometimes it's gonna be messy.

So I stopped.

Took some deep breaths.

Put some ambiance on the TV.

Made a coffee.

And went back to what I was doing.

The dirty dishes were still there.

The trash still needed to go out.

The couch cushions still needed to be fluffed.

I still had the exact same shit to do.

I just stopped acting like it was an emergency.

And I handled it.

That's what hit me today.

I've spent a lot of time working on not making my desire to have things a certain way mean something about the people I live with.

Today I saw the next part.

I can clean the house because I like a clean house.

I can put things back where I like them.

I can handle the shit that needs to be handled.

But who am I being while I do it?

Because I don't want to spend my life frantically trying to get everything handled so I can finally become the woman I want to be.

I want to be her while I'm handling it.

With you,

Still learning.
Still coming home.

— Stacie