I struggle with modern expectations more often than I feel I should, even though I’m not supposed to feel any way about them. Still, I do. I don’t understand how we are expected to accomplish so much with so little time in the day. 

Wake, work, eat, work out, write, other work, check on people, listen to pain, remember to take care of yourself, hygiene, eat, spend time with those you love, pet the cat, read, errands, chores, cook, and sleep for the blink of an eye. Get 10,000 steps in, but who has time to walk 5 miles daily? 

I need routine. I need everything neat and packaged with labels and bells that tell me exactly what to do and when. I need my life coordinated and organized just like the rest of my color-coded article type-specific closet. I need time to be consistent and exact so that everything is just as it should be. I need to be told what to do firmly without hesitation or empathy. 

Dictate my day and destroy my procrastinatory dreams.

But shit I hate routine. 

I hate things to be done exactly the same. My heart finds it boring. My brain wanders off. I can only fake myself out so many times to get that dopamine drip to think this was all my own idea. Which might actually be worse if it were. Why would I ever do what I’ve told me to do? Inconceivable. I’m not to be listened to, my children have shown me that much.

I need to pick a side instead of oscillating between chaos and order. Calm and destruction. Spontaneity and sequence. This. That. 

Five days on, 546 days off. 7 months of Wonder Woman, 11 months of I wonder who this woman is. Back to thinking about all the things I should be accomplishing. Forward to doing everything I can in the small amount of time I have on this earth. 

The up and down of me where one looks down in disgust and the other looks up in horror. How could you? Why should you?

This inconsistency is a beast. It gnarls and gnashes, and I try to calm it into submission. Shhhhhh. Quiet, you little tyrant, calm down, you erratic beast. Hey, wake up, you sloth of a soul, do something meaningful with haste. Let me just loop this collar around you so that we can be as we should. There is so much to do today. I have so much to say. Everyone needs to know.

Yet, I wonder. In this place where everyone shouts, does what I want to say even need to be spoken? Would it matter in the end? Are these tasks even for me, truly? Or do they simply keep me from being still? 

…still. 

Sigh. 

No. 

Sighhhhhhhh. 

Deep breath and sigh again.

That’s what I truly desire. Stillness. Peace. Content. The outside keeps crashing all around, and all I know to do is withdraw within. This inconsistency is a response to the pain, the hate, the overloaded unreality we’re all choking on. Maybe my inconsistency isn’t all my fault. Maybe we weren’t made to withstand all we pretend is normal. Maybe I’m alone, squaring off against myself and the doppelgänger I dreamed up. Maybe no one else will read this and know what any of it means.

It’s just…

Control and chaos. It’s what I know and feel. It’s all to realistically unreal.