My Brain Cannot Take It Anymore, I need a Bigger Space

The first thing I noticed was the ceiling.

 

It was too high for a bedroom ceiling and too decorated for a hospital ceiling. It stretched upward like the inside of a mall, but the light hanging from it was the one from my childhood home at Iyana Apaja, the slightly crooked one my father had once promised to fix.

 

I sat up slowly.

 

My bed was in its proper place. My favourite floral bedsheet, and pillow with the faint soup stain. But now, at the foot of my bed, a group of people were standing.

 

It was a group of people standing patiently, holding various things. There was a woman with a grocery basket, a man in a suit with a brown envelope, a nurse holding a clipboard, and a delivery rider holding his helmet and balancing a paper bag.

 

They weren’t looking at my face. They were looking at my hands. As if waiting for me to hand something over.

 

I blinked and turned around. My wardrobe doors were open, but instead of clothes, there were shelves stacked with cereal boxes and detergent. A price scanner beep quietly in the corner. Somewhere near my dressing table, a soft electronic beep repeated itself like a heartbeat.

 

Beep.
Beep.
Beep.

 

I swung my legs off the bed, and my feet landed not on my rug, but on glossy supermarket tiles. The cold of it climbed up my spine.

I tried to walk toward the bathroom, but the hallway narrowed into something else entirely, rows of plastic bank chairs bolted to the floor. A digital screen flashed numbers overhead.

 

“Now serving 24/7.”

 

A child ran past me holding a balloon that said Limited Offer. The bathroom mirror had been replaced by an ATM. Its screen glowed gently. Behind me, someone cleared their throat.

“Madam?”

I turned. A nurse was close to me.

“We’ve been waiting.”

Waiting for what?

 

I searched for a door, any door, but every time I moved toward an edge, the space shifted. The kitchen dissolved into an airport terminal. Conveyor belts rolled through my living room, carrying suitcases and grocery bags and medical files all mixed together. A cashier sat on my couch. A pharmacist arranged medication bottles on my bookshelf.

 

There were no walls. No divisions. Everything was just mixed together.

 

My chest tightened, not from fear exactly, but from overload. It felt like trying to hold water in my hands while more poured in from above. I couldn’t tell what was what. Everything was just there.

 

Beep.
Processing.
Beep.
Available.

And then, without any warning, everything muffled, the beeping felt distant.

 

Then I woke up.

 

My eyes were wide opened, gaze fixed on the ceiling above me, with trickles of sweat on my forehead. Now the ceiling was normal, my room was intact, bed where it belonged, wardrobe filled with clothes, and no supermarket tiles beneath my feet.

 

My phone lay beside me, face down, and a message notification came in. It was a debit alert, I picked up the phone and opened my banking app to check it.

 

For a second, looking at my account made me feel the same sense of confusion from that dream.

All my money; rent, weekend enjoyment, transport, grocery money, emergency funds, were all jumbled up together, without a clear separation and definition. This always leaves me confused, staring at my account wondering how why my balance drops so quickly and what I spend it on.

 

I would tell myself, “I know how much is for rent,” but knowing is not the same thing as being able to separate. I would mentally divide the money, but mentally dividing requires daily discipline. It’s like pretending there are walls when there aren’t any.

 

And I realised that was the problem.

 

All the money I have is crammed into one space, waiting for another unplanned expenditure.

 

So I stopped telling myself I would “my brain can take it all.” I stopped believing that “self-control” alone would build walls where none existed.

 

———————————————————————————————————–

Dear Reader, hold on to that feeling, that chaotic feeling from the nightmare. The one where everything was mixed together. Because at Open Space, we understand it. We know that earning money is one thing, and organising it is another.

 

That is why we built the Wallets feature.

 

With Wallets, you can create separate, clearly defined spaces (wallets), within your single account for rent, bills, enjoyment, emergencies, travel, whatever matters to you. No more “I’ll remember,” or mixing tomorrow’s plans with today’s spending.