I know I slack off on cleaning when I’m depressed. Then I get a burst of energy and suddenly I’m cleaning without thinking about anyone or anything around me. I’m just trying to take advantage of the energy while it exists—and preferably while no one is in my way.

The bathtub had been draining slowly, so I decided to address it. Or try to.

I made it worse.

The problem wasn’t that I tried to unclog the bathtub. The problem was that I never stopped to ask if my friend needed to shower first.

A few days earlier, I’d given the dog a bath and meant to clean the tub afterward. I completely forgot. Then, while I was scrubbing the stairs with a cloth and a bucket of floor-cleaning water, I remembered the tub. I figured I could rinse the bucket while I was in there.

And off I went.

Autopilot.

I wasn’t really thinking anymore. I was just doing.

Then I got yelled at because I had let all that energy take over the cleaning. I wasn’t trying to inconvenience anyone. I wasn’t deliberately ignoring anyone else’s needs. I just wanted to get everything done while my brain and body were cooperating.

And I had gotten so much done.

I cleaned the downstairs. The whole downstairs. Then I moved onto the stairs and eventually slipped into that strange lost space inside myself where my body keeps going while the rest of me disappears into music, thoughts, stories—whatever happens to be playing inside my head.

Sometimes it feels like there are a bunch of different people inside me, all fighting for the spotlight.

When I’m cleaning on autopilot, I let the “maid” take over. She knows what she’s doing. I put on music, disappear into my brain, and let my body do the cleaning until it literally cannot anymore.

Then I finally sit down, look around at everything I accomplished, and think:

Who the hell was that?

Because it sure as hell doesn’t feel like the same person who can walk past a mess for days without even registering that it exists.

But damn, I feel amazing when everything is clean.

That’s the part I keep trying to understand.

When something good happens—when I’m productive, creative, domestic, athletic, loving, ambitious—I can become so completely absorbed in that version of myself that afterward I wonder which version is actually me.

Am I the woman who just cleaned the entire house and enjoyed doing it?

Am I the woman who can walk straight past the ick without noticing it?

Maybe I’m both.

Maybe I’m the person somewhere in between.

I wish mental health were easier to understand. I wish there were a clean dividing line between this is who I am and this is something my brain learned to do.

But I don’t think there is.

Yesterday I realized that some of my most formative years were spent being shaped by a Sheltie, which honestly explains a lot about why I’m so scatterbrained.

My cat acts like a dog because she was raised by my goofy dog.

My dog acts exactly like me.

So apparently there are at least three of me wandering around now.

It’s funny how much we imprint on one another without ever intending to. People, animals, families, partners, experiences—we pick up pieces everywhere we go. Eventually those pieces become so intertwined that it’s hard to tell what was always ours and what we learned along the way.

Maybe that’s what I’m actually trying to figure out.

How do I find a balance between all the people I know how to be?

The baker.

The homemaker.

The momma.

The partner.

The housecleaner.

The athlete.

The artist.

The writer.

The advocate.

They’re all me.

Maybe I don’t need to figure out which one is the “real” me.

Maybe the real me is the strange, messy collection of all of them—just one big ball of “I hope this is okay” energy trying to figure out which part of herself the world needs today.

And maybe I need to start asking which part I need, too.