Oops! My Thirties.

A Love Letter to Routines That Survive the Storm

I still sort my garbage.
Blue bin, black bag, compost. Labels facing out if I can help it. I crush the cans, rinse the take-out containers, and flatten the cardboard. I still do all that, even now, especially now.

Even when the days collapse into themselves, and nothing feels certain, and all I can seem to manage is stare blankly into the ceiling, I still break down the boxes. I stack them neatly by the door. They are like some small offering to order and to effort. It feels like an offering to the idea that things might one day make sense again.

It’s strange, isn’t it? What we hold on to when everything else slips. How we religiously make the bed every morning only to rot in it. We open the windows for fresh air. Minutes later, we close them because the freshness feels overwhelming in contrast to our stale hope. How we change into clean clothes and quickly change back into our pajamas.

I have lost so many things but I refuse to let go of my little routines. I have lost time. I have lost money. I have lost certainty. I have lost the version of myself I thought would have it together by now. And yet, I can’t bring myself to throw an eggshell into the wrong bin.

There is something holy about routine when you’re barely surviving.
There is something redemptive about rinsing out the margarine jar, wiping the lid, and placing it exactly where it should go. It’s survival. It’s structure. It’s one small thing I know how to do. It’s fighting to stay grounded when the ground beneath you keeps threatening to shift.

Because when your bed is a mattress on the floor, and you have squeezed your life into three suitcases, you need some stillness. When you are counting coins to get your next meal as you fight tears in the dark, you need something that keeps you you.

And for me, it’s sorting the garbage.

It’s showering the tears away at 1 a.m. It’s brushing my teeth while staring at my red-eyed reflection in the mirror. It’s cleaning the shower at wicked hours because insomnia has overstayed its welcome. It’s remembering that toner comes before moisturizer, a few seconds too late. It’s meticulously cleaning healed piercings as if to ward off some infection.

It’s furiously wiping the kitchen cabinets and wiping the counter when there’s no food to prepare. It’s lighting the same candle every night because that is the company I know. It’s re-arranging the books I no longer have the energy to read. It’s an endless futile attempt to read one more chapter of Yanagihara’s To Paradise.

Routines become a soft place to land when the world forgets to offer you one. When there is no one to clap and nothing to clap for. When there are no parades. When there’s still laundry to fold as your heart breaks in a million places.

It’s recognizing the cost of showing up for your life in tiny ways. Whispering “not yet” to the version of you that wants to give up. It is finding poetry in doing the dishes, again. It is in begging God not to give up on you. Yet.

We don’t always know where we are going.
We can’t always believe in happy endings.
But there is no harm in small faith.

And in this house, faith looks like separating plastics from organics.

So, yes. I still sort my garbage.And maybe one day, when everything else has grown quiet and whole, I will look back and remember that I stayed soft even when it all fell apart. I stayed human. I remained me.
And I never stopped sorting the pieces.

In less than 24 hours this place will cease to be home, but I still sort the garbage.