I'm Not a Hot Mess, I'm Just Overstimulated.

This is a story I never thought I'd share, but here we are.

My youngest daughter was two when it happened.

When the Goldfish hit the carpet.

At first, I just stood there, watching her toss handfuls of crackers onto the ground like she was mad at them for daring to fill her belly.

But then she started to stomp on them, grinding those bright orange crumbs deep into the fibers of the rug like she was on a mission.

And. I. Snapped.

I also started to stomp my feet, yell, and burst into tears.

It was like something broke inside me.

Not because of the crackers, not really.

It was more of a snap back into reality.

Ope, there goes gravity. Sorry. Millennial moment.

I knew there’d be crackers on the floor from time to time. But it felt like every day added a new layer of stress to my shoulders.

I was already teetering on the edge of overstimulation, and the sound, the mess, the sheer senselessness of it pushed me over.

I remember dragging out the vacuum, still crying, still frustrated, still asking the universe why. But as I started vacuuming (which, weirdly, helps calm me), the anger lifted just enough for me to see how much I had overreacted.

They were Goldfish. Not Tide Pods.

I wasn’t mad at my toddler. I was overloaded.

Drowning.

And underneath it all, I felt like a terrible mom.

That was the moment I realized: my midlife would look nothing like I thought it would and something needed to change.

My plan was simple.

Married at 23. First kid at 25.

I would be a stay-at-home mom to four children, the quintessential Leave It to Beaver kind of mother, with perfect hair and every meal made from scratch.

I'd never yell.

I'd never lose my cool.

My house would never be a mess.

My life would be full of joy, order, and domestic harmony.

I knew it would be hard, but I believed it was what I was meant to do. What my purpose was.

I did get married at 23, to a man I’d dated for two and a half years, which essentially turned me into an Army Wife almost overnight, a world I never quite fit into.

But my first baby didn’t arrive until I was 30.

Not for lack of trying however.

“PCOS,” they said, in 2013.

“Basically, you don’t ovulate correctly.”

“Cool. Cool.”

Years of bloodwork, pills, doctor’s visits, saving all the money.

The bruised stomach and sore butt from countless shots, this was my new normal.

Two miscarriages through IVF left us with zero remaining embryos, meaning we had to start all over.

The day I found out I was miscarrying our frozen embryo, the one I’d lovingly nicknamed Olaf, I sobbed so hard, I made the phlebotomist cry too.

Three months later, we had moved across the country, bought our first home, and I was unexpectedly, naturally pregnant with our rainbow baby.

I already felt so far behind in life. I was desperate to finally catch up.

To feel “normal-ish” for once.

But, no one really talks about how lonely it can feel to finally have everything you wanted, and still feel like you’re drowning.

The pressure to be the perfect mom, while navigating hormone crashes, body changes, and keeping a whole new human alive, was overwhelming.

I forced myself into the persona of the mother I thought I wanted to be. The one I thought I had to be.

The perfect cloth-diapering mom who tried her best through a breastfeeding experience filled with a screaming baby (with both a lip and tongue tie), a crying mom (with flat nipples), and way too much milk.

Google was my best friend during that season of life.

My search history was full of:

“Am I allowed to stop breastfeeding?”

“Will [insert anything here] make me a bad mom?”

“Am I a bad mom?”

“Is this poop color okay?”

“Am I teaching her enough?”

Add in the endless housework and life as a stay-at-home mom to a husband with a demanding military career.

I was alone.

Drowning.

Always drowning.

I think my real moment of clarity, when I realized I was chasing a fantasy and creating a monster, came on a particularly hard day in January 2020.

I was alone with the kids all day, per usual.

I honestly don’t even remember the details, but I know it was rough because that night, after the kids were in bed, I found myself in the bathroom, sobbing.

I was just so tired.

Tired of my life.

Tired of my brain.

Tired of the constant tug-of-war between the part of me that wanted to be the best and the part of me that couldn’t keep going.

I always felt like a bad mom and a bad wife.

I couldn’t understand how everyone else kept up.

I once asked a friend how she cleans.

She said she just picks one room, makes a pile of items that belong elsewhere, then moves them later.

My brain could not comprehend that.

My compulsion to immediately move something to another room would send me spiraling into a never-ending loop of distraction and overwhelm.

Piles? That doesn’t stress you out the entire time you're working on that room?

What even is that life?

I hadn’t thought about hurting myself in years.

But there I was, standing in my bathroom, trying to figure out where I could leave marks that my kids wouldn’t see.

That was the moment I stood up, wiped my tears, and went to tell my then-husband where I was, mentally.

I booked an appointment.

And a hotel.

I got a much-needed break. And much-needed medication.

Fast-forward to January 2023.

I had enough. My mental health had improved but my overall happiness hadn't.

I had come out as Pansexual to my then husband of 14 years, confided in him how unhappy I was in our marriage and tried with every ounce of my being to make it work.

In February, 2023 I moved out of our family home on seven acres in rural Wisconsin and in July, 2023 I was officially divorced and free to be myself. Fully.

To finally remove the mask I had been wearing for 37 years.

I was finally free to embrace all of the real me.

All of my weird brain, my creativity, my sexuality and my confidence as a mother.

I met my equally weird-brained husband three weeks after leaving a toxic relationship in May 2024 and were married five months later.

Now, as I approach 40 this November, I’ve been looking back on my childhood and my memories, trying to piece together who I am and how I got here.

I’m finally accepting my weird brain. Even embracing it.

My life is messy.

My brain is messy.

My path is messy.

And I truly believe: my 40s will be my golden, messy prime, full of new beginnings, a new career, a new city, and a fresh start.

Because messy doesn’t mean broken.

It means real.