My Own Personal Chaos Theory

Chaos.

So much of my life is in constant chaos. My house is disorganized and messy. My finances could be some kind of failed experiment in Creative Psychic Financial Determinism. My personal habits, like nutrition, exercise, style, make-up: well, let's just say that when I am good I am very, very good, and when I am bad I am 'orrid.

Wikipedia says this about about chaos theory: "Systems that exhibit mathematical chaos are deterministic and thus orderly in some sense; this technical use of the word chaos is at odds with common parlance, which suggests complete disorder." Which gives me hope of some kind, although I'm not sure what!

What I'm coming to realize, as I mull this conundrum of life through the lense of PTSD, is that on some very real level, I need this chaos. I need the mundane, everyday, seemingly simple aspects of my life to constantly preoccupy my entire consciousness. Because if I don't have that ever-present, overwhelming matrix of distraction, life becomes unbearable for me.

As a child, I had a recurring nightmare that stayed with me into my early adulthood. As silly as it sounds, my nightmare was about infinity, a concept that I contemplated obsessively through much of my early childhood. (Yes, I was weird then too.)

In my nightmare, I was floating through a darkness of infinity interspersed by tiny shining spirals of light. The blackness, the darkness, just went on and on and on forever, and it was terrifying. In the dream I would try to really, truly understand the nature of this infinity. I would feel like I almost understood it, but that understanding always remained just outside my grasp.

I would try to get out. I knew that somewhere, in one of the spirals of light, there was a way back to my normal life, if I could only figure out which one it was and how to get there. And I would desperately, obsessively, rush through the darkness, experiencing constant vertigo, trying to find the exit, trying to find a way out. And I never could. No matter how much or how long I tried, I could never find the way out, even though I knew somehow that it was there.

I can't explain how completely terrifying this dream was for me. I would wake up crying and screaming, and I was often afraid to sleep, scared that I would be stuck again in this terrible dream. But I don't ever remember talking to anyone about it. I'm not sure, as a child, that I had the vocabulary to describe it.

That's what I feel like now. I feel like my own silly, crazy, little life is a nest of sorts, and I feel safe here, even knowing that this infinity still surrounds me. Somehow, it's the constant petty details of stress: Where's the rest of the rent payment? How can I afford to take my kids on vacation? What am I going to throw together for dinner tonight? When will all the boxes from my last move finally be unpacked? When will I finally start training for that marathon I've been planning for the past two years? These things, the everyday details of a fractious existence, keep me always focused, and always slightly afraid, in the milieu of my daily life.

So I never have time to look outside my nest. Somehow, truth be told, I think that if I let go of this chaos, I will be sucked forever into that dark blackness of infinity. The idea of what my life could be, unfettered by these petty concerns, terrifies me.

I know what I need to do. Spend less than I make, and save some money. Pay off debt. Do the basics of dishes and picking up everyday. Stick to some reasonable housework schedule that gets everything done on a regular basis. Get out and at least spend time walking consistently, instead of exercising in the sporadic fits I'm prone to now.

But my God, what would I do then? If I wasn't worried about money, if my house wasn't a mess, if I had no cause to constantly fret over my personal self, what would I do? I would spin out into the darkness and be lost.

I might have to face my potential. I might get out and have a social life. I might go back to school for that graduate degree I've always wanted. I might travel. I might finish and submit the novel I've been working on for years.

See? It's terrifying. I know it's irrational, but it doesn't matter. About the scariest thing I can envision is having my life, my basic sh--, together. What would I do then?

But if Wikipedia is right, maybe there is some sense to all this. My own vague remembrance of the reading I did about chaos theory way back when, is that chaos imposed order on seemingly random incomprehensibilities, and that eventually, chaos led to new forms of stability that could not have happened otherwise.

So maybe there's hope. Maybe somehow out of all of this, a new version of me will result, and finally make sense of the current chaos in my life. This sounds wonderful.

Or maybe I should just go do the dishes.

Quote for today: Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart; try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms or books that are unwritten in a foreign tongue. The point is to love everything. Live the questions now. You will then gradually, without even noticing it perhaps, live along some day into the answer. --Rainer Maria Rilke