Sorting the Trash

I’ve been cleaning my side of the street.

Not in the metaphorical, self-help way people usually mean — the “focus on yourself” kind — but literally. Picking things up. Sorting what belongs where. Noticing how much ends up on my side without me quite remembering how it got there.

For a long time, I didn’t question it. Trash is trash. If it’s near me, I’ll deal with it. If I have the energy, why not pick up a little extra? Someone has to.

What I’m realizing now is that I didn’t just clean my side of the street. I cleaned other people’s too. And eventually, I stopped being able to tell what was mine and what wasn’t — because I had already claimed responsibility for all of it.

That’s changing.

I’m learning how to identify what actually belongs to me — my words, my actions, my mistakes, my healing — and what never did. And from now on, I’m not carrying trash that isn’t mine just because I’m nearby, capable, or willing.

This isn’t bitterness. It’s discernment.

I see the same pattern when I look back at my life more broadly.

I’ve held together broken ships with duct tape and Band-Aids. Systems that were already compromised when I arrived. Relationships, families, communities — places where water was coming in from every direction.

I learned how to plug leaks with my fingers. How to brace myself against pressure. How to stay alert, responsive, vigilant. Every time a new crack appeared, I adjusted. Every time something started to sink, I compensated.

And for a while, it worked. Or at least, it looked like it did.

But when you’re the one holding everything together, the system starts to depend on your overfunctioning. Your exhaustion becomes invisible. Your needs become inconvenient. Your presence becomes assumed.

So when the day comes that you need to use one hand for yourself — to rest, to grieve, to tell the truth — and the ship starts taking on water again, something strange happens.

Instead of the crew jumping in to help plug the holes, they throw you overboard.

It’s easier that way.

Two months before my own nervous system finally gave out, I chaired my first A.A. meeting.

I remember feeling nervous and tender. I spoke about compassion — especially for people with grave emotional and mental disorders. I questioned the idea that recovery always needs to center on “you are the problem.” I talked about trauma, nervous systems, context, humanity.

I wasn’t trying to tear anything down. I was trying to widen the frame.

The response was swift and quiet. My sponsor criticized me. Then she stopped responding altogether. Eventually, I asked to take a break — it felt like the only option left — and she wished me the best.

After that, the group went silent.

What strikes me now isn’t the disagreement. It’s the pattern.

I had spoken up. I had disrupted an emotional system by naming complexity and compassion. And the cost of that was belonging.

That response felt familiar.

It mirrored experiences I’d had earlier in life with people who were supposed to be safe: speak honestly, disturb the emotional order, and lose connection as a result.

Around that same time, I was sponsoring someone younger than me. I was trying to keep her grounded while I was quietly losing my own footing. I didn’t yet know I was unraveling — only that I was tired in a way rest didn’t fix.

When I eventually lost my ability to keep functioning the way I always had, she went quiet.

Later, when I tried to reassemble my life again, someone I love deeply disappeared in the same way.

I don’t say this to assign blame. I say it because the echoes matter.

The people I was trying to stabilize disappeared when I became unstable.

That doesn’t make them villains. And it doesn’t make me a martyr.

It tells me something important about the role I was playing.

Here’s the truth I’m finally willing to say out loud:

I am good at fixing things. I am good at holding complexity. I am good at staying present in emotional storms.

But I cannot sustain that without structural support.

No one can.

What I mistook for strength was often survival. What others experienced as reliability was sometimes self-erasure. And what I carried as responsibility was, in many cases, never mine to begin with.

I didn’t fail.

I was functioning inside systems that required one person to be the load-bearing wall.

And when that wall cracked, the system didn’t ask how to help. It looked for someone to blame.

Lately, I’ve been using music to help me integrate all of this.

Not to perform it. Not to polish it. But to metabolize it — to let the experiences move through my body instead of staying trapped in my nervous system.

Writing songs has become a way of telling the truth without having to over-explain it. A way of naming grief, anger, tenderness, and survival without turning them into case studies or arguments.

The project is called Barefoot Grace, and the songs are not about fixing anything. They’re about noticing what’s real. What hurt. What endured. What’s still here.

In a strange way, it feels like a different kind of street cleaning.

Not picking up everyone else’s mess — but finally sorting my own experience with care. Letting the feelings have somewhere to go. Letting the story belong to me again.

So I’m still cleaning my side of the street.

I still believe in accountability. I still believe in repair. But I’m no longer picking up what others drop just because I’m capable of carrying it.

I’m sorting now.

This is mine.
This is not.

And for the first time, I’m letting the rest stay where it belongs.

That’s not abandonment.

That’s integration.

Barefoot Grace

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