Life is messy. That’s pretty much the only thing I believe definitively about our existence. If you could step into my apartment right now, you’d see a visual representation of this theory.

The thing about my unsightly apartment, though, is that it’s the result of some other unappealing things happening in my life right now. I tend to get overwhelmed, thus resulting in my messes growing exponentially. Like, if I am so exhausted that I look down at 1:23 p.m. and realize that I’m wearing two different shoes (and have been for three hours), I’m probably going to skip doing the dishes for the time being.

Actually, I’m sitting at my kitchen table right now and I keep glancing over at those dishes, yet I’m sitting here to avoid the mess that has accumulated in my bedroom. I’ve convinced myself that I’m “packing” the clothes scattered all over my floor, but I think it’s more of a closet explosion due to my indecisive and frantic method of getting ready and changing outfits at least 14 times before I leave to go anywhere.

I just laughed out loud at myself. If you could peek into my mind it would look a lot like this apartment. Don’t even get me started about my room last semester; I kept it locked most of the time and refused to let anyone inside of that disaster. You could collect more evidence of this messy time by looking at the bags under my eyes from sleep deprivation, my new obsession with painting that resembles the work of a very confused kindergartner or the severe shopping addiction that I developed. The fact that the remote thingy for my car has been broken for about two months (so the panic alarm goes off every time I get into my car), just really sums it all up.

The other day a friend shared with me a sincere concern that she might develop a severe mental illness in the next few years, after she saw a movie where this happened. So I asked her how worrying about a potentially messy situation that might happen in five years will change that from happening? It won’t. The only thing it changes is how preoccupied she is now with the thought of it. I might die tomorrow or the next day, but if I know that and I worry about that, I might forget how to feel alive today.

So yes, life is MESSY. I think I probably overshared the degree of messiness my life has reached lately, but I don’t care. Like I said, I laughed out loud at my mess today. Because last week my apartment was spotless. I’m planning on cleaning it after I finish writing this, so it’ll be spotless again today. That’s what I think makes life so cool: messes are temporary!

Nothing is black or white or permanently damaged. Coming from a girl who was so caught up in her mess that I exclaimed, “Get a grip, reindeer!” to myself, out loud, publicly, in the middle of October, and I still repeat that mantra when necessary, change is possible. Very possible.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are always going to be messes to clean up. You don’t always see them coming and when it’s not your own mess, someone else will have a mess that they might need some help dealing with. Life is full of seasons of change, and that’s exciting and beautiful and terrifying all at once.

The only thing you can do to survive these changes is to learn to embrace change itself. Learn to whip out a mop, clean it up and dump that dirty bucket of mop water on whoever caused your mess (kidding ... kind of). Just learn to clean up what you can, when you can, and be OK with a sink full of dirty dishes or a bad grade every once in a while. Sometimes you can’t control messy life situations, but sometimes you can. Take it from the weird girl who continually lectures herself publicly: it’s best not to let one mess spiral into an exponential problem.

You don’t have to let one problematic season define you; perhaps you can define it as the time you learned that messes are very temporary, occasionally funny to look back on and usually end up being OK. Living in this very

moment, right now, and embracing whatever that means in your life is the least messy thing you’ll ever do. Now I’m off to clean my messy apartment. And for the record: I’ll always have a mop waiting to help if you’re feeling overwhelmed.