Lady Peaceful, Lady Happy

I woke up at 1:15pm today to a call from my boyfriend making sure I was okay. I didn’t really know how to answer that; in the span of 30 seconds, I experienced a wide range of emotions. I was pissed off that I allowed myself to sleep so late; remorseful that I had taken a nap at 9pm last night and subsequently stayed up until 3am playing Stardew Valley; ashamed because today is usually the day I deep-clean the apartment, and it was clear that that wouldn’t be happening.

I opened my phone to 17 unread texts: a few automated ads from companies whose rewards programs I’d evidently signed up for; a few from family and friends that didn’t necessitate an immediate response; one group chat that is forever blowing up, but from which I would feel guilty silencing notifications. My phone is scary all the time. I work diligently to stay at inbox zero, but during my hectic workweek, it’s easy to let texts and emails pile up, and the longer I go without responding or clearing out my inbox, the harder it is to deal with it when Monday night arrives and my weekend begins.

Nevertheless, I persisted. I placed the Instacart order I had assembled around 4am; I never get groceries delivered, but I knew last night that I wouldn’t feel like leaving the house today until I absolutely had to. I made coffee and some sourdough toast with honey and plant butter, my breakfast of choice these days. I thought to myself that I should probably eat the chia pudding I prepped a week ago, but quickly disregarded that thought, because fuck it. I folded and put away laundry, I unloaded and loaded the dishwasher, I stripped the bed and put new sheets on.

Somewhere along the way, “Maybe This Time” from the musical Cabaret got stuck in my head, specifically the line “lady peaceful, lady happy, that’s what I long to be.”

I’ve been feeling heavy for a while. Not depressed, not necessarily stressed, just…heavy. Going to work on Friday nights fills me with the nervous feeling I used to get pulling up to school during my tumultuous sixth-grade year, unsure which friends would talk to me and which ones I had unknowingly offended with my mere existence sometime between the morning’s drop-off and 3pm the previous day. The problem is that my work relationships aren’t like that; there’s no cattiness, no bickering, no invisible lines in the sand. We’re all adults and everything is fine, but my brain likes to convince me otherwise. I should feel okay, but I rarely do.

It’s not as if I don’t work on myself. If you know me even parasocially, you likely know that I work a program and am approaching four years of sobriety, a feat that the version of me who was drinking and drugging with abandon in 2022 would never have believed. I sponsor five amazing, resilient women on their own recovery paths. I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder in 2024 and have been in ERP (exposure and response prevention) therapy ever since. I take a low-dose stimulant for my ADHD and an SSRI for my OCD. I pray to the god of my understanding, meditate multiple times a week, and complete a nightly inventory when I remember. So why, if I’m doing all these things to better myself, do I not feel better?

Maybe it’s the vaping; I’ve been saying “I’ve already quit drinking; let me have this” for years. Maybe it’s the algorithm; I’m inundated with influencers who seem to have it all together, showing off their 5am morning routines that include going to the gym before the sun rises and topping off their mornings with perfectly curated smoothies at 7:30am, hours before I’d need to wake up to get 8 hours of sleep after a typical bartending shift. Maybe it’s the fact that I can’t seem to fall asleep without my phone in my hand, despite all scientific evidence saying that’s bad. Maybe it’s the seemingly hopeless state of the country and the world.

But maybe it’s the fact that I am still, against all odds, trying to achieve perfection in every area of my life. My friends largely work 9-5 jobs; I’ve been working nights for nine years. My OCD tells me I can’t miss an opportunity to hang out, no matter how tired I am, because they’ll forget about me or hate me if I do. My two-and-a-half-year relationship is good and solid; my OCD tells me I’m not doing enough and he’s going to leave me if I forget to put his favorite cereal on the Instacart order (which I did; I’m sorry, honey, I’m doing an exposure). I do a good job at work; my OCD tells me I have to read my bosses’ minds or risk termination. The one thing I never really worry about losing is my sobriety, and I’m grateful beyond measure for the daily reprieve that makes that possible. But to my brain, everything else is up for grabs at any time. ​

OCD takes the things you value and convinces you you’re going to lose them if you don’t do X thing—check daily for reassurance that your partner’s not going anywhere; rip apart your room to search for hours for the Concerta that fell on the floor to make sure your cat didn’t eat it; stay late at work scrubbing and wiping every surface to make sure your close is beyond reproach and you don’t get fired (only to be told to manage your time better because you’re close to overtime). It’s something I thought I could mitigate with medication and diligent work in therapy, but it turns out that, much like meetings and meditation and sponsorship are tools to treat my alcoholism, those things are tools to lean on when I feel like I do right now. I need to use the tools outside of therapy sessions in order to ingrain them in my daily routines, and I’ve been throwing caution to the wind where that’s concerned. I’ve been running with my ruminations and beating myself up for every little mistake, and that’s why I’m so burnt out that I took a nap at 9pm, woke up at 11pm, stayed up util 3am, and still didn’t wake up today until 1:15pm.

My friend Gini told me that she changed her phone background to a picture of herself as a child to remind her to protect and stand up for her inner child when things aren’t going right. I think I’m going to do the same, because the child looking back at me dealt with the same things I deal with at 30. Little me didn’t feel good enough; she didn’t think she had any friends; she longed for love and acceptance and worked overtime in hopes of achieving those things.

​Lady peaceful, lady happy, that’s what I long to be. If I’m going to achieve that, I have to give myself a chance first, and that means giving myself a break. I slept that long because I needed it. No one’s going to die if I don’t clean the house today. Pepper Jack did not ingest ADHD medication, today or any day. People aren’t waiting with bated breath for the perfect opportunity to walk out of my life when it will hurt me the most. So today, I’m going to do what I can, and that’s going to have to be good enough.