Dear Miriam-

You are really starting to slack.  You seem to have completely forgotten that to get anything done you have to do anything.  Even though that is almost exactly the advice you gave your dear friend not more than a week or two ago.  Saying you are slacking is too harsh because you are more like a headless chicken.  That makes you blind, deaf, and aimless if not running directly into walls.  You are neglecting things that need tending.  You are tunnel-visioning into, well, tunnels.

Miriam- you have some serious relationships that have been affected by your mental and physical illnesses for years and the cracks are showing.  You better start an account at Home Depot because you have to do something to mend those zig-zagging, criss-crossing cracks and laughing and putting off conversations isn’t going to work forever.  You need to remember that you do have a few friends that you adore and can count on more than you let yourself think.  Start seeking them out instead of hiding from them.  You would give them the (always stained but moving towards more fashionable) shirt off your back so let yourself see what they are wearing.  A little stretching and they might have some shirts you can borrow too.

Stop pretending that the world comes to a standstill while the housework or kiddo craft waits to get finished.  There will never be enough time- you know that.  Miriam, be honest with yourself- if you keep waiting to really dive back into your work until you have the perfect tranquil but energizing space transformed out of your little sun room turned storage locker and all the corners of the house swept it might wait forever.  Do you want to wait forever?  As the song goes: “That’s a mighty long time.”  I have forgotten which song.  Sorry about that but be realistic- can your inner self be expected to do all the work?  Try looking things up or maybe ditching the old music for something they play on radios without ads like “we play all the music you love from all the years you remember most!”

So get cracking, devote a bit of time to making a room of your own and a little time to grocery lists and tub scrubbing but then move on.  Focus and then focus on DOING.  Seriously.  You need to try it.  You need to try harder.  Focus on your work, focus on the kids, focus on the best way to treat your pain.  For god’s sake, focus on the people you love who love you back.  But Miriam, you are 32 and can not just wish that life would straighten itself out because you made a really good list that day.  You get credit for kicking ass in the whole “working on getting better” thing, but you are quickly losing ground outside the health care realm.  You do not live in a doctor’s office.  You are not a professional patient.  When people say they are taking a “mental health day” it is so they can take a break and get away from their troubles.  Your version of a mental health day seems to be to head straight into the depths of crazy and sick and hope there isn’t a storm.

Miriam, if this were a letter to the editor I would probably offer a proposal for a change in zoning regulations or an explanation of why we shouldn’t trust “those” people.  But it isn’t.  Although… zoning regulations and reevaluations of relationships is kind of spot on. This is an open letter that I am hoping will show you and the readers who are out there (right?) that sometimes you need to step back and take a different perspective on things.  Give yourself a good talking to.  Every therapist I have ever seen has said at some point “what would you tell your best friend if they were in this situation?” or something similar.  I am not my best friend but I do need to tell myself what to do from a more disciplined place more often.  Easy right?  Hence the “open” part of the letter.  Accountability.

So in closing please remember that you do not have to be super-writer, super-mommy, super-wife, super-homemaker, super-business-re-starter, super-finance-manager or super-crazy-sick-person all the time.  Pick a hat (although I hate that expression) and wear it for 20 minutes, an hour, a week- whatever you can take and feels reasonable.  Focus on it as best you can and then move the hell on.  Give yourself permission to break away, give-up for a spell and let go to give yourself space.  In the simplest of words: Miriam- you must do this to keep functioning because we all know what happens when “super” becomes the norm.  It doesn’t work and you fall fast and hard.  So read this letter, hope that it makes sense and hope that you can make some sense of the world.  Not figuring out the whole world right now on demand, just make some sense as best you can.

Feel free to address any comments to both the author and the addressee.

Sincerely, The Inside of Miriam’s Brain