The Comfort of Clutter...

I have an unexpected restful Sunday today - the snow has fallen heavily enough to lead to Church being cancelled, and I am not needed for my stewarding duties beyond having made some phone calls to make sure people know we're closed.

So today is the PERFECT opportunity to get the house ready for Christmas. It so happens, though, that one of my strongest ND traits is a paralysis when it comes to housework.

If you don't experience Executive Dysfunction, let me explain. This isn't a lazy putting-off of  tasks. It isn't me thinking I'll do it later. 

It's me despairingly looking at what needs doing, willing my legs to move and my head to get into gear. It's me spotting something I meant to pick up 2 weeks ago, still there in the corner of the room. And when I make the effort, it's like a horse stubbornly refusing a jump. It's not being overly dramatic to say that sometimes I physically cannot tidy a room. There's something in my head which just... stops me in my tracks (if I had any tracks).

It is SOOOO frustrating and it has led to me feeling, like many other NDs, that I am a complete slob and a failure. Do NOT underestimate the self-loathing your neuro-divergent friends experience on a daily basis. It's horrible. It makes us feel like awful people, and no amount of rationalising helps. 

There are rare days when my hyperfocus kicks into Cleaning Mode, and then I whizz round the house, full of self-congratulation, reminding myself that all I have to do now is keep it this way. 

And then - suddenly it's a month later and I realise I haven't.

I think there is an element of time-blindness in here. I am always on time, very punctual, I am good at multi-tasking and planning for things and so I had always thought that this at least was something I had escaped. 

But in my post-masking days I've been experimenting. On the days when I've managed to do some much-delayed task, I have timed it. And almost always, a task I think will take a couple of hours takes 20 minutes at most. So there is an element of self-sabotage. I am beginning to challenge this belief though and I KNOW that today I have more than enough time to tackle everything that needs doing. I decided to begin by blogging about it so that I could end with a progress update later in the day.

And that's when my brain went into stubborn DON'T WANT TO BLOG! mode. Then I really knew I was in trouble!

My daughter has been messaging me with helpful ideas and offers to check in through the day. She's amazing and I am very grateful. But I know all I need to do is - get off my backside and START.

There's another element to this which I've never seen mentioned in all the tons of literature about Executive Dysfunction, and I would love to hear from anybody who experiences this.

I am conscious that when a room is finally decluttered and clean, after an initial moment of feeling I've achieved something amazing (even though the little niggly voice sneers at me for congratulating myself on something I 'should' be doing every day) something else happens.

I feel... gosh, I don't have a word for it. It's akin to empty. But it feels more like my soul is disappearing into a vacuum. When the visible clutter isn't there I feel Less Me. As if I have emotionally invested in it to the extent that seeing a room without the clutter is like looking in a mirror and only seeing an outline of my face but no features.

I am certain this can't be just me. There has to be an emotional investment in staying messy, surely, whatever the issues with one's Executive Functions?

And deep down I wonder if understanding this better would help me to stay tidy, although I suspect it's the same sort of thing as knowing a lot about metabolism and exercise and diet but still being larger than I would ideally like.

I've at least realised that there is very little motivation to be had in dreading the place being clean and tidy. All I have to do now is reset myself a little so that the rewards of tidiness are a bigger boost to my self-esteem than the comfort of clutter.

Or I could just have another mug of tea...

I really WILL update later today. Wish me luck! 

So - it's almost 10pm. And yes, I DID do a lot of cleaning and tidying, not finished but I did enough to feel I had made  real difference.
The problem is that when you have been here so many times before and know how it usually turns out, it's difficult to have faith in yourself to keep up the effort. 

Perhaps I was born to have staff. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe I have Housework Dysphoria. Anyway - the house is just about ready for me to put up the Christmas tree, so that's a relief. I wish it didn't feel like such a huge effort when really it's not that big a deal.

Emotionally I suppose it is. I live alone now. Christmases past were very different - not least because I sent and received loads of cards, as I think I mentioned somewhere. I have very strong and happy memories of sorting the cards with my Dad to stick them on the walls to make a geometrical pattern. Back then I think we used to get at least 200. I've written a lot about Christmases past, poetry and prose. It was a time which resonated with my inner mystic before I ever knew the Christmas Story or went to church. The taste of the tree lights, the sense of hush and wonder - even the traffic on the busy road outside (the A650) was muffled in the snow. 

I didn't realise until my forties that the reason Christmas was so happy was partly that my Mum was having regular tots of sherry. I look back and wish with all my heart that she had been happier, but I suspect she had PND as well as a thwarted career mindset. 

Anyway - tonight I asked Alexa to let rip with the Christmas music and I cleaned and even had a dance. 

There's hope for me yet.