I wake up to the sound of plates crashing in the kitchen—not by accident, but because I dropped them. Not all of them. Just enough to get the blood moving, to snap the world into focus. There’s something about that sharp, sudden rupture that makes everything feel more real.

I sweep the shards aside with my foot. Barefoot, even. A little danger in the morning helps with clarity.

People say I’m reckless. They mean it like an insult. But most people, they don’t know what to do when the world stops behaving. When schedules collapse. When plans fail. When someone pulls the rug out from under them. They freeze. They break. They fall.

Not me.

I come alive.

See, everyone spends their whole life trying to build walls. Routines. Systems. Calendars. Neat boxes for their messy thoughts. And then when the unexpected happens—the chaos, the noise, the sudden shift—they panic. They call it disaster. They call it crisis.

I call it oxygen.

My mind is quietest when everything around me is on fire. It’s like some inner switch flips. When alarms blare, when people shout, when the ground shakes—my thoughts line up neatly, one behind another. I know exactly what to do.

I’ve always been like this. When I was a kid, the playground would erupt—someone pushing, someone crying—and I’d be the one who knew. Who understood. While others flailed, I saw the world with outline and color, sharp and clean.

I didn’t realize until I was older that people practice mindfulness to get the feeling I naturally have during disaster. Funny, right? They close their eyes and breathe deeply, imagining quiet oceans—and I get there by wading into storms without flinching.

But it’s peaceful, to me.

Chaos is honest.

Order can lie. Order pretends everything is fine. Order smooths over cracks and whispers like everything is stable and safe and calm. But chaos—the break, the shatter—it shows the truth underneath. It shows who people really are.

I don’t cause chaos. Not always. I just don’t run from it.

Today, for example, the office is a mess. Someone messed up the numbers, the deadlines are wrong, the client’s furious. People are running around like the building’s collapsing. Voices are sharp. Fingers are shaking. One girl is crying in the supply closet. Again.

I walk in like it’s a lovely afternoon.