everything's a mess

including this substack

how would you describe the current state of the world? chaos? mess? disaster? if we could take a time machine back 100 years and ask the average person their thoughts on the state of the world, what do you think they’d say? would their response be more optimistic? would it be any better than where we’re at now? or would it be similar? almost eerily the same? well i don’t have a time machine and neither do you, so we’ll never actually know what that answer would be. but we can play a fun game and guess until we talk ourselves into thinking that right now we are somehow special enough to be living through the craziest of times. actually, i keep hearing people deeming it “unprecidented” which means, without previous instance; never before known or experienced; unexampled or unparalleled. isn’t that every period of time in history though?

somehow and someway, right now specifically feels different. i can’t put my finger on it but i know for a fact that i feel different. this heaviness surrounding the future of the world feels more severe. i know i am definitely not alone in this either. i have noticed the people in my life becoming more and more overwhelmed. which leads me to my next thought. politics. what could be more of a stress inducing subject than that? when i think of politics i envision an umbrella with gaping holes in it and every single problem on the face of the earth is underneath the shade getting absolutely pelted left and right. i’m not delusional enough to think that there has ever been a time where the umbrella was actually doing it’s job to perfection. but the holes just seem to keep getting bigger leaving more people unprotected.

i remember reading The Crucible in high school and being completely fascinated by it. “The Crucible is a 1953 play by the American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1692 to 1693”. as the years go by, this piece of literature reigns truer and truer because of the creation of social media. the play does a perfect job of casting a light on the darkness surrounding mass hysteria.

what happens when you use fear as a tactic to have control over people? well, i guess Donald Trump becomes president.

no matter which side you feel more comfortable with, both ways lead to being illogical and inhumane towards the opposing figures. “in the play, people lose their freedom and lives either because they do not conform to norms or because they are swept away by fear and anxiety”. when is fear necessary? in life or death situations obviously. so why am i so scared of Trump? he isn’t a direct threat standing in front of me right this very second. doesn’t us fearing him also fuel him?

fear has always been the greatest tool used by the people in power. it’s really all they have going for them. these “unprecedented times” don’t feel so unprecedented after all. this mess has been years and years in the making.

i often go through waves of life where i’m about to go do laundry, or wash dishes or maybe even deep clean my room into oblivion like an energizer bunny; when suddenly i’m hit with a pang of dread. do you ever get those? it’s this fuzziness in my stomach, chest, and throat that reminds me of being a kid in trouble. like the time i accidentally let my uncle joe’s dog beaux eat a fudgesicle. beaux and i had such a special bond and for a whole entire day of my adolescence, i had to process the fact that i might have just killed him. thankfully he was okay, but that feeling is something i will never forget. when i get that pang i know exactly what’s coming. i start to obsess over the fact that i make things dirty just to clean them up. over and over and over again. that’s how i feel about the world. it’s this endless cycle we’re living inside of. we destroy things just to be able to have something to fix. the media makes us scared about everything to remind us how little control we actually have over anything, which then results in this hyper extreme version of everyone vying for some semblance of control over all the things in their life they possibly can. i even think our generations obsession with aesthetics can be linked to this in some way.

as i have gotten older i’ve noticed the urge to clean getting stronger and stronger within me. i used to exist in chaos. my room was messy and disorganized and filled with things i would never use and things that i did use, but never put away. until suddenly one day i couldn’t take it anymore. i blame it on the weight of the world becoming so heavy that the mere thought of my place of existence being cluttered in the same way i feel by everything else around me just couldn’t be possible.

all of a sudden, out of thin air, a clean freak was born. i never thought i would see the day. ask my family or friends that knew me in 2018. we all have our coping mechanisms in life. this has definitely become mine. in an effort to gain some control over an absolutely uncontrollable life, i have become a perfectionist. but perfection doesn’t exist when everything’s a mess. you can only play whack-a-mole for so long. the world is uncontrollable. i struggle to believe that “we the people” really have a say in anything at all.

when i start to have these thoughts that turn into what i like to call “spirals”, i am reminded of the duality i possess in me. my mother is an eternal optimist. sometimes painfully optimistic during times when i all i want is for her to lay off on the unwavering hope. today, for the first time maybe ever, i saw her break down about the mess. she’s scared now and it’s really showing. she was positive and brave during the entire election cycle because she chose to not concede to fear. this month really turned down the light in her. but if there’s one thing that i can count on in this life, it is that my mothers hope will always find it’s way back. my dad on the other hand has shown me the world through a pessimistic lens. according to him, it’s all broken and will never be fixed. i find myself sort of stuck in the middle in many ways. both of their approaches are incredibly extreme. which is also where i’m struggling to find my place in this current political climate. i posses in me the “burn it all down” mentality, but i also find that people thrive with some sort of order to things. i think that when you commit to the extremes there is no longer balance. balance is needed for peace. but i don’t know if that’s even possible anymore. or ever was.

‘everything’s a mess’ was the first conception of the song. it felt like the angry scornful pessimist who believes that we are all doomed finally letting it all out on the song. one day when i was listening to the demo, i felt like it evoked too much cynicism out of me. i had this desire to breathe something lighter into it. ‘cleanup’ then became the story through this sad but hopeful optimist person who believes that anything that is broken can be fixed. i had then become set on this newer more hopeful version being the one & only version i was going to release, until one day i listened to it and felt angry again. i wanted to hear the other version to allow space for that anger. this duality in emotion felt very important to these songs. there’s always two ways to look at things. both make me feel very seen, depending on how i’m feeling that day. funnily enough, my mom prefers ‘cleanup’ and my dad prefers ‘everything’s a mess’.

i am no politician but i can’t help but feel like all the people we’re allowing in power have got it all wrong. instead of turning everyone against one another, shouldn’t we be turning to each other to make change? we all have so much more in common than we even realize.

republicans being the party of freedom and small government while simultaneously giving the control over a women’s choice to the government or trying to cleanse different types of people and expression from our vocabulary; MAKES NO SENSE.

democrats being the party of the people while simultaneously abandoning the working & lower class giving them no hope at all; MAKES NO SENSE.

where is the balance?

i certainly know that i don’t have the answers to literally anything at all. but sometimes just sinking into the feeling that everything’s a mess that feels impossible to cleanup helps me find peace. acknowledging the true fact that life is a series of making messes only just to clean them all up again has started to feel comforting? it’s the one thing, aside from death and taxes, that i have chosen to start to accept.

everything’s a mess

london bridge is falling

while i’m laying unfazed in my bed

dont know why i’m balling

don’t know why i can’t get out my head

aaaooooh

howling to the moon

now i’m through

shouting for you

everything’s a mess that feels impossible to cleanup

i spilt milk onto my dress

now i’m crying in the beat up car i leased in 2020

i had a little money

god i need i little re up

hurry pick the speed up

everything’s redundant

everything’s repetitive i know

i’m caught in the negative

i’m caught up with everything i know

aaaooooh

howling to the moon

now i’m through

shouting for you

everything’s a mess that feels impossible to cleanup

its impossible to cleanup

everything’s a mess that feels impossible to cleanup

hurry pick the speed up

cleanup

london bridge is falling

while i’m laying unfazed in my bed

don’t know why i’m balling

don’t know why i’m stuck inside

its the end of the end

i know i know

every tear can be sewn to brand new

everything’s a mess that feels impossible to cleanup

i spilt milk onto my dress

now i’m crying in the beat up car i leased in 2020

i had a little money

god i need i little re up

hurry pick the speed up

all of its redundant

all of this repetitive cycle

wind me up and settle it

whine enough to feel out of control

its the end of the end

i know i know

every tear can be sewn to brand new