“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” ~EE Cummings
When I was a little girl, I had the smallest bedroom in the house.
It was small. Honestly, it’s probably the size of a small closet. But it was mine. And now for the first time I had to choose what it would look like.
I remember choosing the baby blue wallpaper with little pink flowers. My mom covered it halfway up the wall with wood trim, and the upper half remained white. I chose a soft blue carpet for it. I had a twin bed, a small desk, and just enough space on the floor to sit next to my bed.
It wasn’t much, but I loved that room. I was proud of him.
I had a routine every morning during the summer. My mom went to work and I got up and made myself a bowl of cereal. Back then I was a picky eater and pretty much only ate sugar. Hello, 1990.
After my breakfast I started cleaning my room and got ready to go to the pool next door down the street.
I despised my bed. I recorded everything. I vacuumed the carpet. Every day.
The pool next door didn’t open until noon and I walked there alone, but before I left, my room had to be clean. That’s not what I asked. That’s all I did.
I didn’t think much of it at the time. It felt normal. It just felt good. I liked my room when everything was in place. I liked the way it made me feel.
But I didn’t understand why. I didn’t understand that outside of my room, my life was anything but calm.
I grew up in a home where you never knew what was going to happen next. There was tension, fear and a constant feeling of walking on eggshells.
You never knew what mood someone would be in or what could cause things. You learned to pay attention to everything—tone, energy, small movements—because they mattered.
Even when nothing happened, he wasn’t always calm. There was a kind of unpredictability that remained in the background.
As a child, you learn to read energy before you understand it. And when you can’t control what’s going on around you, you find something to control.
This was my room.
In this area, everything remained where I did. Nothing surprised me. Nothing was unpredictable.
Looking back, I see that I didn’t just clean. I created a sense of stability in a life that didn’t have much.
I gave myself something solid to grasp. I didn’t know it then, but I can feel it now when I think of that little girl moving around her room making sure everything is in order before she leaves for the day.
It wasn’t about perfection. It was about having fun. This realization did not occur to me until recently.
I cleaned my house, listened to an audiobook. I didn’t plan on doing much, but once I started, I was completely immersed in it.
And it hit me. This is not new.
I clean when they are overloaded. I clean when I’m angry. I clean when something seems wrong.
It’s almost automatic. I questioned it for a long time. Why can’t I relax when I feel like things are messy? Why do I feel like I have to fix everything before I can relax?
I felt that something would not settle in me until everything around me was dealt with.
Sometimes I would try to ignore it and tell myself to sit down, relax and leave it for later, but it doesn’t last long. Because I knew how it would end. I didn’t feel at peace until I did it.
That little bedroom wasn’t just a room. It was the only place I felt safe. It was the only place in my life where I was in control.
Cleaning isn’t just what I do. It’s something I go for. That’s how I created this feeling, the feeling of calmness.
When I saw it like that, something moved.
It stopped feeling like something I needed to fix and started feeling like something I could understand and even respect.
There are many ways people can cope when life feels overwhelming. There are many ways people try to regain control when things feel uncertain. And this? This is what brings me back to myself.
Instead of questioning it, I understood. Instead of thinking, “Why am I like this?” I thought, “Of course I am.”
A lot of what we do as adults doesn’t start here. It starts much earlier, in ways we don’t fully understand at the time.
We adapt. We will find a solution. Wherever we can, we create little pockets of control, safety and relief.
And these patterns don’t go away. They follow us. Sometimes quietly, sometimes in a way that we don’t even ask until something stops and takes a closer look.
It looked like cleaning to me. Not because I needed everything to be perfect, but because order helped me feel grounded. It gave me something stable to fall back on when everything else was uncertain.
And when I look at it that way, it changes how I see myself. Now, when I find myself wiping down counters or reorganizing a space when they’re overwhelmed, I don’t struggle like I used to.
I recognize it. Familiar. This is something that has been with me for a long time. But more than that, it’s something that helped me get through it. And maybe this is the part you should pay attention to.
Not just the pattern itself, but what it did to me. Because when we start to understand where our behavior comes from, something changes.
We stop reacting to ourselves. We are starting to see the connection. We begin to realize that the things we have carried with us, sometimes without realizing it, were never accidental.
These were answers. These were the ways of adaptation. Life could be managed with methods, even if it wasn’t.
If you find yourself repeating certain behaviors, it’s worth asking what they’re giving you, not just why they’re there.
When you see this clearly, there is less judgment, more awareness and more choice.
The little girl who cleaned her room every morning wasn’t trying to be perfect. He created something that he needed.
And in many ways I still am.
About Cylina Miller
Cylina Miller is an author who focuses on self-awareness, emotional growth, and a deeper understanding of the “why” behind our patterns. Through the storytelling of personal experiences, he explores how early experiences shape our thinking, feelings and navigation in life. Share more thoughts and resources here: https://cylinamiller.myflodesk.com/zp48cnsbhw.
