I sit here surrounded by a room full of stuff. Work stuff, hobby stuff, household stuff, guinea pig stuff….there’s just stuff. Everywhere.

It’s so far removed from how I grew up, but one thing I’ve come to learn after 10 years living away from “home” (i.e. with my parents) is that how my home is kept is a pretty sound indicator of how my mind is keeping.

If there’s stuff cluttering the house, there is guaranteed stuff cluttering my mind. It probably goes a long way to explaining the nights I can’t sleep then pull a blinder the next day and blitz through a ton of things and not feel tired after it all, and that’s fine – even if it’s woefully unsustainable.

Whilst I am managing my chronic pain and fatigue better, I’ve become complacent and convinced myself that there’s nothing really wrong with me, I should be able to do life the way everyone else does.

If the girls I went to school with can juggle a newborn, a toddler, a school age kid, a life partner, their extended family, friends, careers, housework and hobbies and still find time to binge on Netflix at 8pm on a Wednesday evening, why can’t I?

The truth is we adapt to the life we have, and until then, we live within our means. If we don’t have the pressures of X and Y, there is no need to even think about Z. We may envisage Z as impossible, until we have to incorporate it, until we have no choice. Most people are never ready to become parents, it happens and you roll with the kicks. You don’t think about how you adapt, you just do. Nobody is ever prepared for the pain and reality of divorce, but you can bet that when you thought about X and Y, your vision of Z was totally different to the Z you find yourself living.

I know how lucky I am to have the luxury of being self-employed and choosing to work from home. So many adults don’t get that choice. I’m lucky my husband is okay with the fact he’s the main breadwinner. It doesn’t mean there’s no pressure on me. If anything, I feel a lot of pressure, I feel a lot of weight around failure and stress to try and be the best version of me for everyone all the time, and I feel like I can’t complain about it. But that all comes from me, jaded from my experiences in life, my experiences with relationships and conformity and the resolutely not normal life I had growing up.

There are two big carryovers that increase that pressure on me. Both come from within, are deeply ingrained, but I understand intimately. Much of my stress is self-inflicted, and I know why I do it to myself.

The trouble with having had mental and then additional physical chronic illness from childhood is that I’ve always had something to hide behind when things get tough. Not replying to messages? Sorry, I slept in until 4pm then have not stopped since in order to catch up around the house, the weekend really wiped me out! Not getting the house tidied up in a basic way like making the bed, or doing the washing up… Yeah my joints are really painful today, I’ll add it all to the list.

I have come to realise, and accept, that I have many a time used my illnesses as excuses. While the excuses may be true fundamentally – today my full body pain is about a 5 with some localised 6/7s – I cannot say that this pain is the reason I slept in until 12pm and then got back in bed after dressing. Were it not for my determination to read and making myself sit up in bed, I’d still be there right now (3.50pm and counting). Sleeping. It was the act of putting my wheatpad in the microwave and heating it that got me out of my head, because I told myself I’d do this one task: get the ingredients in the soupmaker and turn it on, then I could get back in bed.

I have not been back to bed. (Although I am getting really tired and my pain is up to a 7 head to toe right now. Mental exertion affects the body too!). My wheatpad is sitting in the microwave, cold and untouched. The soup is cooling and portioned ready to freeze. The kitchen is clean. There is no washing up to do or dry or put away. All the floors are vacuumed. I’ve sorted the newspapers out in the pigs room. And I opened my laptop and came straight here to write this.

My willpower, my self-discipline, are my biggest weaknesses. Despite it taking so little to kickstart my mind and body, I spend an awful lot of time in my own head convincing myself that there is no point to anything. Dredging up the counterargument to that is not easy, and it isn’t a once-in-a-while kinda thing. This happens every single day.

My self-disclipline skills are lacking in large part due to my abnormal adolescence and early adulthood. I last attended school at 13, and I have never been employed. I have always lived on my terms. I was able to sit my GCSEs because the LEA (Local Education Authority) in Saffron Walden put in place tutors to come to my home and set work for me, meaning I had accountability and routine. There were times I was genuinely too unwell to attend a lesson even in my own home, but we worked with it and ultimately I succeeded. 5 GCSEs. Not having a science qualification or only having 5 GCSEs has never bothered me, because I know what it took to manage that, the hell I was in at that time. I take most pride from the fact I’d mastered some major life lessons at 15 that millions don’t even begin to see as important until long into adulthood:

You don’t have to do things by the book. You don’t have to conform. If anything, it is up to you to make the most of your situation and make life conform to you.

Coming back to how this all contributed to my ill-disciplined current life: I know how to make things work for me. I know how to kickstart myself, as hard as it is every time. And I am not afraid to take the norm and either discarding it fully, or shaping it into a model that fits me. What I struggle with is having the drive and the mental compartmentalisation to do everything on my back. Every minute aspect of my business is all me. The housework is 90% me. Projects like kitchen renovations require my energy and time. My husband needs my attention. My family need my support. I have neglected dear friends who I value immensely but have treated them so badly (not even reading messages sent weeks ago) I honestly don’t deserve any grace or kindness from them. My suffering in this way is impacting those around me, my business and it is so much the opposite of how, and who, I want to be.

I simply can’t fathom how to spread my energy between all of these, still have time to rest without breaking the flow, and somehow find space in my brain to create, or to learn, or to think. How does everyone do it?

And then, when I’ve found the motivation and I’ve done some housework and some work and some personal development stuff, the ideas and energy builds up every evening and through the night until I sleep…and on waking, I am starting every single thing from scratch. Zero motivation. Zero drive. Zero interest in any of the things I was so passionate and excited about just 12 hours earlier. I am dragged right back to ground zero, every day.

I am aware I’m very much an all-or-nothing person. I am generally all in, or I am not in at all. I’m trying to work on it, but the first, biggest and most convincing thing in my brain is, “I’ll do all this and feel great then watch it all build up again like I did nothing at all, and have to do it all again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after…“.

The enforced stop/start routine of “day and night” screws me over so bad. I don’t understand why life is like that. I do get it, I totally understand what the human body needs. It’s just my brain? My brain does not operate on that same plane. My brain is not and never has been a 9-5 shift worker where no matter what, it pings on at 9 and switches off at 5 and I can move seamlessly in and out.

My body might need a particular cycle to function, and I’m sort of getting to grips with serving it a little bit better, but seriously need the instruction manual for my brain.

I have every idea yet still I have no idea whatsoever.