Note to Self: The Anti-Chaos Issue [July Issue #1]

You’re Not Lazy, You’re Coming Down From Hypervigilance

Anti-Chaos, for me, doesn’t mean calm. Not yet.

It means finally feeling the weight of everything I’ve carried for 34 years—and realising I’ve never really put it down. Not once.

This isn’t a motivational post. There’s no silver lining or “I’m stronger because of it.” It’s just what’s true today.

I always needed to be on guard as a kid.

At my grandparents’ I needed to be on my best behaviour so my papa wouldn’t get pissed off and throw my gran out the house after drinking vodka neat from the bottle. Or when he found out she’d poured some down the sink and replaced it with water. If that happened, my mum would get a call on the landline, the call would go dead (which meant he unhooked the phone line), and my sister and I would get ushered into the back seats of the car, still in our pjs, to go and check on her. We’d be told to stay in the car, but we’d watch through the slats in the living room blinds from the car window. Constantly asking ourselves, what if he comes out here?

At home I needed to be on my best behaviour because if I made too much noise and disturbed my dad from watching football, he’d smack us. I’d try to hide under the bed. If I cried, he’d smack us again for not listening. He’d threaten us with his belt from time to time, too.

But you know, that’s just “how it was done” back in the day, right?

Emotionally unavailable parents raising children without any self awareness—and somehow the internet gets the blame now. Funny that. Except they didn’t have it back then.

I’ve lived my whole life in hypervigilance.

Constantly scanning for danger. Reading moods like weather patterns.
Being overly nice, overly sweet, overly apologetic—hoping it would keep people calm. Because happy people don’t hurt others. Right?

If I loved them enough, would they soften—just for a day?

Could I fix it with love?

In the end, I gave it all away. I kept none of it for myself.

Even in primary school when my best friend dropped me for the new girl, I kept hanging around the group. Even when they made fun of my lunch box sandwiches - sandwiches I actually loved, but started binning because they laughed at me. I told them I didn’t like them. That my dad didn’t listen to what I wanted. I was hungry all day. For food. For kindness. For so much.

Eventually I stopped hanging out with them, but by then I didn’t know where I belonged. I floated around the playground like a ghost. Tolerated. I could join games here and there, but I was never chosen.

And that’s when I started lying.

Little white lies to make myself sound cooler. To make someone want to pick me. But when they found out I was lying, it only confirmed what I feared - I was too much. Too weird, and yet, not enough.

I’m crying as I write this because I think I’m realising I don’t know who I am.
Or who I’ve ever been.

I think I’ve just been a girl who wanted someone to love her. All of her.
To cheer her on. To pick her. To see the person I am inside and think: “I like her, just for her.”

I feel like I’ve spent 34 years proving myself to people, and it’s breaking me piece by piece.

There’s nothing to resolve here.

Just a small, cracked-open moment of truth.

And maybe that’s all Anti-Chaos really is: letting the truth come out when it’s ready, without having to fix it, figure out the bigger ‘why’ behind it, or turn everything into a lesson.

Maria x

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✦ Read the Rest of The Anti-Chaos July Issue #1:

→ Cult Cravings: For the sensory obsessions and secret comforts we romanticise our survival with
→ Note to Self: The emotional fog between burnout and clarity, written in real time
→ Dead Honest: No fluff. No filler. Just the truth you’re too tired to dress up
→ Moodswings: July’s emotional forecast (spoiler: you’re not actually losing it)
→ Directors Cut: When the dream comes true but doesn’t feel like you thought it would

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