Messy

It was the moment the police officer asked where my passport was — and I could instantly find it buried beneath a large pile of dirty washing — that I knew I would be okay.Three hours earlier, I’d received a frantic call from one of my housemates: we’d been burgled. I was at work, doing some admin at my desk when the call came through, mind you, this was where my housemates also worked. In fact, everyone I lived with in London worked there, alongside a cast of jobbing actors, dancers, and wandering souls. (But that’s a story for another day.)I jumped on the number 43 bus, which conveniently stopped right outside my front door — a real blessing back in the pre-Uber days for a night bus home. When I arrived, two police officers were waiting. We moved from room to room — Dave’s, Danny’s — making a list of everything stolen: passports, credit cards, and a rather peculiar collection of porn DVDs. One of which was left behind. To save dignity, I won’t name the title or which housemate owned it.When we reached my tiny box room, the female officer peered in and, with surprising sincerity, said, “I’m sorry, but they are complete b******s.” I don’t know if that’s official police terminology, but I appreciated the honesty.I looked inside, bracing for the worst. But there, exactly as I’d left it, was my room — untouched. In a bid to save face, I played along as we ticked off items on the list that were right where they should be: a laptop under my duvet, a handbag behind a plant pot, and yes, my passport under a heap of dirty laundry.In my defence, I’d just returned from a girls’ trip to Miami which you could also describe as messy and hadn’t quite unpacked. So my room was spared — maybe the burglars thought it had already been ransacked. I took this as a small personal victory for messy living.Although you can now see enough of my bedroom floor to walk across it rather than jump between patches of carpet, I still can’t seem to shake the fact that my brain is, on a good day, an absolute shambles. The constant stream of information isn’t just overstimulating — it comes in such relentless waves that I never get the chance to think things through and file them away properly. Instead, everything just sort of floats around up there, being shoved aside by useless trivia and 90s song lyrics that, for some reason, my brain has decided are top priority.Right at the bottom of that pile, by the way: passwords. Honestly, if I ever get hacked, I’ll just be relieved that someone finally knew which pet name and special character combination I went with. I’ve been locked out of PayPal for three years.Sometimes I wake up determined to become one of those organised people. I sit down with a notepad and start detailing my life — making lists, resetting passwords, and inevitably shopping on Vinted under the noble pretence of “finally building a capsule wardrobe.” It usually ends in frustration, tears, and a debilitating headache.I’m sure there are self-help books and influencers who could tell me how to declutter my mind. And, to be fair, I’ve found a few things that help: no phone, yoga, walking outside, and more recently, sauna and cold plunges. Finding ways to live with it — rather than fight it — has allowed all the messiness, creativity, and chaos in my brain to have its own kind of place.Maybe if everything in my head were neatly filed away, I wouldn’t find myself laughing out loud on the street at some random incident from my memory bank — or waking at 3 a.m. to analyse an embarrassing mishap from years ago. (Okay, I could do without the 3 a.m. self-chats.)Maybe the chaos stirs up not just annoying hang-ups but also funny anecdotes and odd memories that bring flashes of total joy at completely unpredictable times. And maybe when one chaotic mind meets another, you don’t even need words to connect — you just get each other and laugh.It’s also worth noting that living in this state of disarray has its perks: I’ve never once been asked to join the PTA (no matter how desperate they are), or to organise a party, or to produce a spreadsheet for anything. I was once asked to take minutes in one of my early jobs, and after twenty minutes of daydreaming I snapped back into focus just in time to write down the only thing I’d heard: “Have you written any–f*****g–thing down?” It got a laugh — luckily my boss had a good sense of humour, and maybe that laugh was exactly what we all needed.So perhaps, just like the passport, it’s amidst chaos that we find what we really need. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit toriecampbell.substack.com