There comes a time when we all have to stop offering excuses, and pick up where we rather messily left off.  I’m at that point, and feeling rather proud of myself for doing something really incremental– taking the call of a creditor on some health insurance payment snafus.  It’s a drop in the bucket of all the stuff I’ve got left to wade through, swim through, not drown in, but until the last week or two, I just haven’t felt up to the task of being functional.  I still don’t really feel up to it, but I do feel more up to it than I have.  And I’ve got to start sometime.  But I still want to excuse myself from my behavior– I’m not normally like this, I’m usually more of your 45 day billing cycle procrastinator, every three week housecleaner and laundry doer, who still gets stuff done.

“My mother went rather spectacularly mad,” I could say.

“I have bipolar and have been having a difficult time adjusting to my new medication,” I might put it, mildly.

“The endless winter this year has made me even SAD-der than usual.”  That’s true.

If I was feeling really TMI?  “My thyroid is also falling apart and I am a rashy mess of brittle nails and hair, swollen hands and feet, and lumpy throat.  And I’m even colder all the time than I was before.  And I could lie down on the subway and sleep, I’m that tired.”

“I’m depressed and scared and elated and paralyzed and whirring with activity all at once at potentially leaving litigation forever, and starting a whole different career,” I could also say, at least as if I was in my therapist’s office.

All of these are true.  And they’re what come to mind when I wonder why my house is a mess, my bills are a mess, my life is a mess.  But at the same time?  I’m tired of making excuses.  I think I’m almost recovered enough that I just need to start plowing through, as painful as it is, and start taking those creditor calls, opening those bills, slaying those dust hippos, climbing those mountains of laundry.  In short, sucking it up.  No more excuses– even though I’m still tired, even though I can’t wear a turtleneck or scarf because my thyroid’s so tender, even though I don’t fit in my normal-sized clothes, even though I’m still not at a fully effective dose on my meds, and therefore prone to weepy-whiny-crankiness.

But life is what happens when you’re making other plans, or even just lying down in the middle of it, letting it wash over you.  I’m going to get more than a bit winded, trying to keep up, but I’m restless and productive enough now, I think, to pick myself up slowly, painfully, start catching up.