Sometimes I do tarot readings for my friends.
At this point, it operates like a very exclusive girls' club. New members are admitted strictly through word-of-mouth referrals. No ads. No Instagram marketing. No sign-up forms. Just a whisper network of women saying, "You should talk to her." Officially, a session is supposed to last 45 minutes.
Unofficially? We somehow end up talking for 2–3 hours.
There are tarot cards, obviously, but also tea, biscuits, life updates, discussions about our mothers, dramatic retellings of situationships, and occasionally a 15-minute intermission where we log off, make snacks, and then log back in to continue the conversation.
It's less of a tarot reading and more of a therapy session with a light dusting of divination on top.
And so the other day, I was speaking with a friend who had booked a tarot session with me. The reading was supposed to be about her next career move; new opportunities, professional growth, all the practical things that bring people to tarot cards in the first place. We were deep into discussions about work when, as often it happens in these conversations, we drifted toward the subject that quietly occupies a corner of almost everyone's mind: love.
"What does my married life look like with my fiancé?" she asked.
I laughed. "You already know the answer to that, don't you?"
She paused for a second and then smiled. "Yes. Let's skip it, no?"
Of course, we didn't skip it.
I pulled a few cards anyway and told her what I already suspected. "You'll mostly agree with each other. He's a sweet boy."
She nodded.
"But," I added, "I think you become a little too tyrannical sometimes."
She burst out laughing because she knew exactly what I meant.
She told me how she can somehow sense, even in her sleep, that her fiancé has left something in the wrong place. A cup on the counter. Keys where they shouldn't be. A shirt draped over a chair instead of hanging in the wardrobe. It's almost supernatural. Somewhere in the middle of the night, a tiny alarm seems to go off inside her: He's done it again.
So I asked her a question.
"Who is this really disturbing?"
Her fiancé, being the cheerful and easy-going person he is, probably forgets about the misplaced object within seconds. The cup is just a cup. The shirt is just a shirt. The world continues to spin.
But her mind and body, meanwhile, remain on high alert; watching, anticipating, waiting for the next tiny trespass against order.
I told her that can't be healthy.
Not because organisation is bad. Not because standards are wrong. But because living in a constant state of correction is exhausting. There is a difference between maintaining a home and policing it.
"Do less," I said. "Relax."
And that somehow led us to a much larger conversation about mess.
Not chaos. Not neglect.
Just the gentle disorder that appears when people are actually living their lives.
I told her how living with someone can sometimes make us a little neurotic; not because anything is terribly wrong, but because we're constantly trying to be the "right" one, the responsible one, the person who's got it all together.
Then she said something that really stayed with me: "I think it's the social pressure, how does your married life look like, how you'll run a house, how disciplined you are. Somewhere in that process, we forget who we were when we were just… ourselves."
On a video call, she casually showed me her room. A few things were lying around here and there. Nothing dramatic. But she laughed and said she slips into hyper-vigilance mode the moment he walks through the door.
Then I thought to myself; It's funny how some truths aren't life-altering revelations instead they are tucked inside ordinary moments like these. The way we straighten a cushion before someone sees it. The way we explain a harmless mess. The way we stop being relaxed versions of ourselves without even noticing.
Maybe a lot of peace lives in these tiny corners of life, waiting for a little less judgment and a little more compassion.
In the middle of all this, she remembered something her fiancé had said one evening after returning from work.
He had walked into the room, looked at her desk, and asked with genuine confusion, "You use this table to work at, right?"
"Yes," she had replied.
He looked around.
"Then how come it doesn't even have a water mark on it?"
The way she told the story made us both laugh.
Imagine that. A desk so spotless, so untouched by evidence of human existence, that one begins to question whether any work has happened there at all. No coffee ring. No forgotten note. No pen without a cap.
No signs of battle.
It was less a workstation and more a museum exhibit dedicated to the concept of productivity.
And yet, what struck me was not that she cleaned so much. It was that she found the comment funny because some part of her knew he had a point.
A perfectly maintained space often tells us very little about the life lived within it.
A water mark can mean someone sat there long enough to finish a cup of tea while reading.
An open book can mean curiosity.
A blanket thrown over a chair can mean comfort.
A half-finished sketch, a stack of letters, a mug forgotten beside a laptop; these are not necessarily signs of carelessness. Sometimes they are traces of engagement. Evidence that someone was present, thinking, creating, resting, loving, or simply being.
We often speak about cleanliness as a virtue, and it certainly can be. Order has its place. A well-kept space can bring calm and clarity.
But there is another kind of beauty that belongs to lived-in spaces.
The beauty of a home where people are comfortable enough to leave pieces of themselves behind.
The beauty of not rushing to erase every sign of existence.
The beauty of allowing life to leave fingerprints.
Perhaps that is why I like messy spaces.
Not because I enjoy disorder for its own sake, but because they remind me that life is not a showroom. It is not meant to look untouched.
A home where nothing is out of place can sometimes feel as though nobody has been there.
A home with a few books left open, a cup waiting to be washed, and a chair slightly pulled away from the table tells a different story. It says someone was here. Someone laughed here. Someone worked, dreamed, worried, ate, rested, and loved here.
Mess, in small doses, is often just life refusing to hide its tracks.
And perhaps there is something deeply human about allowing those tracks to remain.
And yet, the funniest part was happening in real time.
Only moments earlier, we had been talking about letting go. About not being so vigilant. About allowing people their harmless imperfections. About leaving traces of living behind.
She agreed with every word.
Then, without missing a beat, she reached across the screen and began cleaning again because her fiancé was about to walk through the door.
I watched this happen with great affection.
Because perhaps that is the real lesson. We do not become freer the moment we understand something. Insight arrives first; habits leave much later. We can recognise our own absurdities and still perform them faithfully. We can laugh at ourselves while continuing to do the very thing we are laughing about.
Ultimately; we are all a little messy inside our head.
Maybe that is why I feel at home in messy spaces.
(All views and opinions expressed in this article are author’s own)
