I’ve always been drawn to the places where life feels a little unstable, like walking on the edge of a cliff or dancing barefoot in a storm. Chaos has a way of pulling me closer, whispering promises of adventure, thrill, and passion. It’s not that I crave destruction or want everything to unravel—it’s more that I find a strange kind of beauty in the unpredictable, in the wild current that refuses to be tamed. Yet at the same time, deep in my bones, I long for stillness, for a life that feels soft, steady, and grounded. I want both—the pulse of chaos and the quiet of peace—and I’ve spent years trying to figure out how to hold them together without tearing myself apart.
Chaos, for me, doesn’t always look like wreckage. It can be as simple as saying yes when I should have said no, staying up until dawn when I promised myself I’d rest, falling too hard for someone whose heart was never really mine, or diving headfirst into something I didn’t think through. It often shows up in the way I throw myself into life, hungry for experience, unwilling to sit on the sidelines. That recklessness, though, can be intoxicating. It makes me feel alive. My heart races, my body hums, my mind spins faster than it can keep up with. And yet, when the dust settles, I ache for quiet. I ache for peace so badly I almost resent myself for running toward the fire in the first place.
What I’ve learned is that chaos and peace aren’t enemies. They’re dance partners. They’re constantly pulling at each other, one testing boundaries and the other offering balance. I’ve tried shutting out chaos completely, convincing myself that maturity, wisdom, or healing means I should want only calm waters. But the truth is, calm without contrast feels flat to me. It feels lifeless. If peace is the meadow, I still crave the thunderstorm rolling in over the horizon, just close enough to shake me awake.
I think part of why I flirt with chaos is because it feels like freedom. It’s the part of me that refuses to shrink, that wants to live without a script, that thrives on possibility even when it’s risky. It’s also the part of me that knows life is fragile, that nothing is guaranteed, and that sometimes you have to break rules or push limits just to remind yourself you’re still here. But peace—peace is the exhale after all that intensity. It’s the place where I can finally set down my armor, unclench my fists, and rest without feeling like I’m missing out on something.
The tension between these two desires has shown up in almost every corner of my life—relationships, work, motherhood, even the way I dress or decorate my space. I’ll choose black one day and soft linen the next. I’ll spend hours in writing, craving silence, and then wake up the next morning with a desperate urge to book a trip or rearrange my entire life just to feel movement again. I fall for people who ignite fire in me and at the same time daydream about building a home that feels like a sanctuary. It’s as though my spirit can’t decide whether it belongs in the storm or in the stillness, so it keeps choosing both.
What I’ve come to accept is that this is simply who I am: a contradiction, a paradox, a person who doesn’t fit neatly into one lane. I used to think it meant I was unstable or confused, that wanting chaos and peace at once was some kind of flaw I needed to fix. But now I see it as depth. I see it as proof that I am alive in ways that can’t be flattened into one identity. Peace gives me strength to survive chaos, and chaos gives me the fire to appreciate peace. They need each other, and I need them both.
Of course, it’s not always easy. Sometimes my love for chaos takes me too far, and I find myself overwhelmed, burned out, or standing in the ruins of choices I can’t undo. Other times, my longing for peace makes me withdraw so much that I miss out on the spark that chaos brings. Learning how to hold them together—how to flirt with chaos without letting it consume me, and how to embrace peace without resenting its stillness—has become one of the biggest lessons of my life. It’s not about choosing one over the other but about learning how to let them coexist inside me.
Peace, I’ve realized, doesn’t mean living without chaos. It means knowing I can come back to myself even after chaos has swept me off my feet. It means trusting that I can survive the storm and still find a way to be soft afterward. And chaos doesn’t mean recklessness for the sake of pain. It can be creative, spontaneous, passionate. It can break me open in the best ways, shake loose parts of me that peace alone would never touch.
So when I say flirt with chaos, it’s not because I want to destroy myself. It’s because I want to live fully. And when I say I still want peace, it’s not because I want to be boring or safe—it’s because I want to come home to myself after the fire. I want to be both wild and calm, fierce and gentle, storm and meadow. I want to dance on that thin line where chaos and peace meet, because that’s where I feel most like myself.
Maybe the truth is that chaos and peace aren’t opposite at all. Maybe they are two faces of the same coin, teaching me balance, teaching me rhythm, teaching me how to live a a life that isn’t just about survival but about expression. To flirt with chaos is to admit I crave passion. To want peace is to admit I crave grounding. And to hold both is to admit I am complex, human, and unafraid of contradiction.
So I don’t apologize anymore for being drawn to both. I don’t try to quiet one in order to honor the other. Instead, I let them take turns. I let chaos wake me up, and I let peace put me back together. I let myself be messy and serene, reckless and reflective. Because at the end of the day, that’s the art of living—learning how to hold all the pieces of yourself without demanding they make perfect sense.
And in the quiet moments, when I’m sitting with myself after another dance with chaos, I remind myself that peace isn’t something I have to earn by being good or careful. It’s already within me. Just as chaos is. I don’t have to choose one over the other. I only have to choose to keep living with my heart open wide enough to hold them both.
Lanalefay 