I hate mess.
But, alas, it loves me...
I hate mess.
Hate it.
Not in an OCD-way, though. I can exist in semi-squalor for a bit if my resources are needed elsewhere. Under the right circumstances I can get my hands and feet proper dirty and it doesn’t bother me too much.
I’m talking about emotional mess. That’s the kind that, to put it mildly, freaks me the f out.
I like to categorise. I like to curate, I like to allocate, I like to sort. I like to put things where they belong. All things - but especially emotional things. And when it’s not clear where they belong, I tend to flounder.
To me, emotional mess feels dangerous, like a real threat. And when I identify people or circumstances that have the potential to illicit emotional messiness, I want to protect myself.
I found the image below in a Carl Jung book I picked up off the side of the street and I related to it so hard. It’s a drawing a patient did of literally holding everybody else at arm’s length for self-protection. Ha!
I’ve gotta say, sometimes I feel like I’m still learning how to emotion, and that’s why I study emotional reactions like animals in a lab. I suspect that’s also why I took to the self-help world like a moth to a flame - I thought I could fully effort my way out of emotional messiness. Even thought I had it there for a second, things were going so smoothly!!
But, alas…
Mess seems to love me.
Or rather, God seems to love it for me.
Not all the time, thank goodness, but considerably more than I would like. And when I try to claw my way out of it, I repeatedly get dragged back in.
I was given a prime example this month after experiencing major and very unexpected disillusionment. I realized that I am walking into a scenario with way more emotional complexity that I am comfortable with. Way less “this is right” and “this is wrong”. Messy, no matter how you slice it.
And my first reaction was GET OUT OF THIS.
But that’s what I’ve always done (leaving places, leaving people etc.).
And I’m after different results now. So I am staying.
Two ideas have been swimming around my thoughts leading up to and since that decision:
1.)
My working theory here is that God wants me in the (emotional) mess, because I can learn things there that the not-mess will never be able to teach me.
I went to church the Sunday after I was freshly-disillusioned, and the pastor said something that helped me a lot: God may place you in the middle of a trial - purposefully - like he proper wants you there, but he will also resource you with everything you need to go through it.
This serves not only to strengthen your relationship with him, but also your trust in him, because YOU DON’T HAVE THE WHOLE PICTURE. He does. He knows what he is doing, and if he called you into something, there’s a good reason for that.
2.)
Often, something is not either good or bad. It’s complex.
My sister (bless her loving support) explained to me the difference between complex and complicated. Both are a type of mixed up, but with complicated you can still separate the parts, while with complex you can’t. Many very beautiful things in life are complex.
I guess many of us tend to think things like:
-I want the benefits but I don’t want the responsibilities.
-I like this person’s xy but I don’t like their yz.
-I will take this on if I get the good parts, but pease hold off on the bad.
But that’s usually not how it works.
To take it a step further, sometimes the very things you dislike are simply the other side of the coin of what you love most. If your wish to remove what you don’t love were granted, many of the things you cherish most would disappear as well.
This is often true of a circumstance, a job, a relationship, or even a quality within yourself.
Let’s take the “emotional-OCD-ness” I am writing about here. I‘ve described it in a pretty hardcore way to make a point - promise I’m actually fun at parties - but I don’t actually consider it a bad thing. Left unchecked, it can surely wreak havoc on my life, but my relentless drive to understand and then extract meaning is also part of what makes me brilliant at writing these letters. The way my mind works leaves very few boxes unchecked, which also helps my clients get excellent results. I have more clarity than almost anyone I know, as well as the ability to methodically move through challenges like an absolute machine. I LOVE these things about myself and I wouldn’t trade them to be a little bit more loosey-goosey emotionally.
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Back to the current messy mess I find myself in.
My plan is to navigate these potentially emotionally-choppy waters with moment-by-moment responses as opposed to a rule. Plus a lot of grace and prayer.
What’s your relationship to emotional messiness? Do you thrive in chaos or order? Comment below, I am eternally curious.
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Megan Boegman
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