RealMental

As if I didn’t have enough times in my life when I want to take to my bed and stay there, isolated and cocooned in the dark, my family was blessed with the arrival of a probable case of the H1N1 flu last week.  Both kids had it but had few symptoms, mostly cranky and cooped up.  Me, I was bedridden from Thursday until when I woke up and went to a parent-teacher conference Tuesday morning finally fever free for a long stretch so no longer contagious according to CDC.  Basically five straight days in bed.  Most of those days I had no voice to boot.  Sweet.  I am still sick-ish and definitely bitter about the whole “I got the H1N1 flu” thing but some other things have happened.

I slept quite a bit.  I watched a lot of bad TV- thank god we ignore all the advice about keeping a TV out of the bedroom!  Also the flu gave me a chance to think about some unexpected things.  I had a lot of time to do nothing but stare at the walls and beg the world to inject Morphine into each individual joint but also to think about what I was missing by being in bed.  What was it that was getting neglected?  Who was I ignoring?  How could my kids have this same flu but not be dying like me!!?  How were my kids doing without me?

When I am tucked under covers and feeling miserable is the world just moving along without me, never noticing I’m gone, never stopping to check the gears for a weak cog like me?

I figured out a surprising amount of things while sweating and aching with piggy induced fevers.  As it happens when I am in bed or I imagine, even when I am just hiding from the mailman, I am not missing a lot.  Yes, there are places I could go and people I could see but- meh- whatever it is not really anything new.  Turns out though that other people were missing me.  There are aspects of the world that function better with me in it.  I may not have truly, deep down missed all the playground drop-off and pick-up interactions but when I saw those people I talk to on Tuesday I was happy and excited and they were happy to see me.  They were happy to listen to how much it had sucked to be so sick and how I was still a little shaky.  They had wondered where I was and asked around. They did what I would do if someone I knew went MIA. Huh.

What about my kiddaloos?  They were sick but still running laps around the apartment and making my head hurt.  They were being watchfully cared for by my husband, in whom I have been seeing new subtle tenderness that is much welcomed and was much needed while I was oinking away.   The kids were a little stir-crazy but all in all they were really happy to be playing with Daddy.  When they felt sick they were fine to be comforted by Daddy and when I got REALLY sick they were fine with staying away from me more.  Sure they missed me and wanted to play but they also were okay with just coming in when they could and hanging out in bed to color or watch a show about a baby chicken, robin and duck.  They are okay with whatever version of me is available, sick, or not.  Huh.

And the world- yes it does move along without me just fine.  It rained, it was sunny.  There was soccer practice, the physical therapist stayed open.  Stores didn’t close and god bless them, neither did Starbucks.  Just one latte delivered bedsides at a few key times make a big difference.  It will take the standard mothering equation of # of days sick x 1.5-2 (depending on severity and spread of illness) to get the house and such back in order but it isn’t anything new.  There wasn’t a drastic situation where there were no clothes, dishes, groceries or activities.  Thankfully.  So neglecting the house for a few days (okay close to a week) was/is okay.  Geez- I am sunshine and roses- this must be the fever because I am usually not so sunny but it is sincere and truthful so take it for what it is.  It is all I have got.  This is where I would insert a smiley face emoticon.  But I won’t.

So the moral is that the world keeps going when I am not around but that it doesn’t completely ignore the weakness or absence of this particular cog.  Huh.

I wonder how many times I have taken to my bed simply because  I was sure the world could not keep going- everything was ending.  Or because I felt like the world would keep going and leave me behind- flotsam and jetsam left to float aimlessly and without ownership.  How many times did I hide behind curtains and excuses because I was afraid my kids would notice that I wasn’t able to be “myself” with my friends or family or even the grocery store clerk?  And it took a stupid mutated flu virus to make me realize all this.  Well there was the fever, sweating, chills, cough, aching bones and sleep disruption too.  Oh wait- that was still the flu.  To make it clear- I hate the stupid, stupid flu- especially this one, but the hours in bed may have done a kind of good that I never would have expected.  Just don’t let the psychiatrists know… we could all end up with porcine prescriptions.

Now go wash your paws while you sing the alphabet twice.

It’s all in my head.  I should just snap out of it; get over it.  I’m making it up.  If I could just give my head a shake and come to my senses…

I don’t need to be like this.  I’m making excuses.  I’m a coward, a liar.  I’m just being lazy.  I’m trying to weasel out of responsibility.

When you get used to people not taking you seriously, it’s hard to take yourself seriously.  I probably doubt myself more than anyone else does, at this stage of my life.

I somatize my emotional pain.  When I’m overwhelmed by grief, when I can’t process it all in my head, I feel it in my body.  Aching joints and muscles, fatigue, heaviness in my chest, stomach aches.  The aches and pains are the worst.  They’re everywhere, from my jaw all the way down my spine, into my hips, knees and elbows, hands and feet.

I used to be able to take an Advil or a Tylenol to help me feel better.  But there’s not any type of OTC pill left that won’t burn holes in my stomach and make me feeling like puking for a whole 24 hours.  So I just tough it out.

I’ve had every type of blood test my doctor could think of – all negative.  Maybe a little auto-immune dysfunction, but nothing worthy of a name.  The rheumatologist was only willing to say that it “could fall under the umbrella of fibromyalgia-type illness”.  No help there.

Because it’s “only psychological” I get down on myself when I get symptoms.  I feel that I should pull up my socks and get on with things.  I become useless.  I lie on the couch under a blanket a lot and wait to feel better.  One time, after a particularly traumatic experience, it took me 8 months to feel better.  I don’t know how I kept working full-time through that episode.  I almost couldn’t bear it.

And now, with four people in my immediate family suffering from serious illnesses, I’m wearing my pain on my body again.  Ouch.

I have friends at church; smiling, freshly-scrubbed friends.  Friends full of energy, who work full-time jobs and then spend their evenings and weekends volunteering for charitable causes, training for fund-raising marathons, and getting masters’ degrees online in their spare time.  They have four times as much energy as I do.

I sing in a church band.  I help our leader, an upstanding 30-year-old who believes fervently in saving the world, with some of the administrative tasks.  He saw how helpful I could be, and wanted me to participate more.  I said “no” to one of his requests, but I knew that more would follow.  I didn’t want to start making up excuses.  I didn’t want him to think that I was trying to weasel out of helping because I was lazy or apathetic.

So I tried to explain.  I wrote him an e-mail describing my “fibromyalgia-type condition” and how I have to limit myself because of it.  How I need extra sleep and downtime etc.  And of course he was understanding.  But I still feel like a liar.

I only told part of the truth.  He and my band-mates still don’t really know what’s going on with me.  They don’t know that it’s psychological.  What would they think if they knew?  How well can they ever get to know me without knowing this about me, this fundamental thing that defines the frame within which I live my life and make my decisions?  Could they possibly understand?  In equal parts I want to tell them everything, and I want them never to find out.

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

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. That is the way the saying goes.  Going by that reasoning I must be holding onto some finely-tooled leather reigns and racing through the woods under a starlit sky right about now.

I wish for clarity and brevity.  I wish for simplicity and strength.  I wish for resolve and repair.  I wish for whole-ness where there are pieces breaking off.  I wish for an answer but I don’t think I have even asked the question in the right way, let alone at all.

I simply wish.

Wishes are like prayers with less faith.

When I was little in stature and years alike, I was accustomed to prayers before bed.  They were usually said in bed and used the same structure each night, modeled after something my grandfather (missionary offspring and minister) devised.  It was not just said for comfort and love and to give a big “hello” to the man I pictured wearing brown and hanging out with sheep and children.  My siblings and I also used it to stall for more time with my parents or more time with our eyes open and the light on.  No sacrilege intended.

“God bless our happy home right here and all our loved ones far and near.  God bless…”   And then comes the listing of names; closest family first, stuffed animals and extend from there.  I think it ended “and God bless Jesus.  Amen.”  I’m fuzzy on the last part but undoubtedly will remember when I have already posted- since it is too late to call my sisters or mom for a phone-a-friend help on this one now.  I should say right now I don’t practice any religion in particular as an adult.  My family (husband and kids) celebrate Christian and Jewish holidays in a way that holds true to family tradition and tries to connect to culture before god.  God is up to the kids when they get there.  Although there will be a post on my blog about the kid to god connect-the-dots coming soon.

Modeling after my own parents, I started saying something to the kids each night without really thinking about it a while back.  I don’t remember starting it but I do remember it got longer periodically as I thought of a new sentence to add.

“I love you so much.  You are my best little (boy/girl.)  You will always be my little (girl/boy) and I will always be your mommy.  I will always do my best to love you and protect you.  You will always be loved and cared for and safe in this home and in this family.  Good night.”

A little longer than your standard “G’night Kiddo,” but it keeps me comforted and my wish is that it keeps them comforted as well.  It is familiar and patterned and I do not stray from the expected.  I wish for them to have faith in me that I will generally not go wildly veering off the road.  I know that I have had my moments of that with them already and there will be more, so a little belief in me now can only help.

What they don’t hear, and I don’t even know if my husband hears, is what I say when I check on them before I go to bed each night.  They are lying in bed, sweaty foreheads and feet dangling off bedsides.  I lay my hand to their head and whisper.

“I love you so much.  You are my best little (boy/girl).  You will always be my little (girl/boy) and I will always be your mommy.  I will always do my best to love you and protect you.  You will always be loved and cared for and safe in this home and in this family…”

Then I lean in closely as if there were someone around who was eavesdropping.

“May god bless you and keep you tonight, this night and every night hereafter.  I love you.”

I start with statements and facts, promises of what I hope to be able to do and what I know I can do. Then when it is darkest and the house is quiet, I end with a wish or prayer.  That is the best I can do and it is a system I tend to apply to a lot of things in my life.

I am trying to apply it now, to the moment, the day, the week, however long I need to.

So, things are sometimes hard right now, even when I am happy and the ever-popular psychiatric euphemism of “doing well.”   There are always an abundance of things I wish I could say and can’t or won’t.  Even, maybe especially, here.  There are always times when a t-shirt announcing my situation or state of mind would feel cozier.  I can try to muddle through this, well, mud that is bogging me down.  I can try to hold strong for those who need me and bare my weaknesses for those who can take it. I can look for comfort in cooking and falling leaves.

My wish or my prayer is that writing about how I can’t be clear or specific in my writing, but have things to share, will help me feel better.  I think I might even be writing with almost total selfishness for the first time here.  Not that I don’t want someone to feel better or connected or like they can reach out- please wish I may, wish I might, that even my selfish and disorganized, devolving writing could be so useful- that I could be a voice in the dark so powerful!  I am writing because I want to feel differently than I do right now.  I wish I could make it happen as instantly as the letters appear on the screen.

I wish I were a beggar with a horse as fast as lightning with legs that never tired.  Tonight, this night and every night hereafter.

“My shadow side, so amplified, keeps coming back dissatisfied—“

It’s starting to be autumn here—creeping, slowly but surely, through the windows and the trees.  Each morning is a little cooler, and it’s almost unnecessary to keep the air on at night.  I’ve picked back up the habit of leaving my car windows open when it’s too cold, blowing the heat on my feet so I don’t freeze up.  I remember starting this, in the almost-autumn of 2006.  A lot of things were starting then.  I was about to go completely crazy, and I didn’t know it yet.  I wouldn’t know until after the fact.

So the autumn brings the memories, brings them in viscerally.  As it gets colder, I will keep remembering.  I won’t stop.  I will try to, sometimes.  But they get stuck inside me, stuck on repeat.  They are skipping records, spinning in my abdomen.  The echo is enough to drive you crazy.

Or, at least, crazier than you are already.

They get exacerbated by new memories, by the phrases tossed around by friends.  One of my closest friends from medical school is on her psych rotation, and she had the distinct pleasure of doing a home visit for a man in an acute manic phrase.

“I know he’s sick,” she said, “but I couldn’t help thinking ‘This is someone I’d want to hang out with.’  He made us mix cds, and he was wearing these huge glasses.  He was…fun.”

I don’t want to be sarcastic, because I love her and, anyway, her perceptions give me new perceptions.  It’s like looking at someone looking into my past and describing me.  But still, in my head, I want to quip, real sardonic, like I am these days: “Fun…yeah, that’s one word to describe it.”

On bad bad days, when I’m beaten down and feeling miserable, I worry that I will never feel that euphoric again.  People want to be that, don’t they?  Euphoric?

[Hey all you bipolar people—let’s tell the world our secret.  Euphoria is unnatural.  The kind of happiness that shouldn’t exist, the kind that is only possible with spazzed-out neurons and illegal drugs.  It’s a dangerous feeling, in that you will always want to chase it.  Don’t you want to be happy?  What’s wrong with being happy?]

Not to leave out all the normal people.  Hey normal people, over here!  Welcome to my Mind Fuck.

Every day, I make the conscious choice to file my memories into piles and folders.  Memories of cheating, of lying and manipulating, of sleepless nights spent pounding coffee and writing plays, short stories, poetry—collate into folder marked “BAD.”  Memories of time spent getting out of that hole I’d dug myself, memories of therapy breakthroughs and the first time he said “I’m sorry,” after all that—pile overflowing the “GOOD” box.

But there’s always the shadow of everything that was.  Where do you file the memory of someone else putting on your motorcycle helmet because you always fuck it up, the conjoined memory of your hands in the air, 70 MPH on city streets at 4 AM [File it BAD, Jenny.  File it BAD.].  When you think about winding red ribbon around your favorite book and giving it to someone else—this book is about love, you think.  When you are crazy, you think you have the power to make everyone see everything—you think you can make people love you [FILE IT BAD, GODDAMMIT—DON’T THINK ABOUT IT—JUST DO IT].  Every moment when you felt beautiful or brilliant or sexy, every moment when you thought you were spinning the world with the electricity in your heart [BAD—BAD—BAD].  Everything you worry you will never feel again.

I put those things in the BAD folder, sure.  But the Shadow keeps wanting to pull them out.  So I re-file them, once or twice or a hundred times a day.  But sometimes I worry that the Shadow will pull them out, and that they’ll sit on the desk in the sorting pile while I stare at them.  That I won’t remember why they’re so bad in the first place.  That I’ll drop them somewhere else, or just pick them up and inhale their dusty pages.  That I’ll tumble into them, like some movie for children.  Except it’s not a game.  It’s my life.  It’s the life that I’ve put everything too.  It’s the whole life, everything I have to lose.

So, I focus on generating more memories, to hang on the wall over the GOOD box.  So I’ll remember:

-That I feel beautiful when I catch a glimpse of my eyes in my rearview mirror

-That I feel brilliant when I finally work out a mechanism, when I take something apart with my hands and put it back together, better than it was

-That I feel sexy when my boyfriend picks me up in the kitchen [though I’m wearing glasses and a pair of umbrella-print underwear, and I’ve got morning hair] and throws me onto our bed

-That every day, I get the chance to spin the world with the electricity in my heart.

These last few weeks I have been spending a lot of time alone with my almost 4 year-old daughter.  As summer counted down and my son’s first day of kindergarten drew nearer I started to get very nervous about all this upcoming alone time.  You would think I would have been looking forward to it- excited and eager for the opportunity to have all the “Mommy and Me” time I had one on one with my son repeated or matched up with my daughter.  I wish that I could lie and say I have waited for this for years.  I have actually been terrified of it for a long time.

After my son was born we had mommy and baby playgroups, developmental activities, hours giving Good Night Moon and Kerouac equal reading time, coloring outside the lines, giggling at the walls- the list goes on.  When I became pregnant around his first birthday there was no need to stop any of this.  Well, at least not until I was too huge and tired to make complete sentences.  Then I threw all promises of saintliness aside and taught my son how to use the remote.   Okay- not exactly- he could never figure out the right combination of buttons to get to PBS… but I did give in to the TV and settle into the couch.  Until playgroup or Kindermusik or a well-timed trip to the park.

The delivery of my daughter was so traumatic as to bring on a new recurrence of my previously undiagnosed but obviously there PTSD. The severe post-partum depression was just a fun bonus.  I was connected to the baby in all the “right” ways.  We nursed and co-slept, stayed abreast of developmental stages and her relationship with my son.   I made sure she was happy.  We had a new playgroup too.  One for the town, one from when my son had come along.  Mommies had their second babies.  I spoke wisely and joked about all the silly things and was the sarcastic one but pleasant as always.

I was also a super-mom.  Cloth-diapers- some sewn by myself, homemade clothes, no chemical cleaners EVER, organics, the best play date table spread you could imagine.  Theme days, crafts galore, organization of organizing tools, the continued ability to run my handmade goods business and do weekend fairs even with a new baby.  I was also lying to the world.  I was not super anything unless super crazy counted.  I hid my symptoms all day and let the night hold them for me.  It was during that time that I lay in bed and wrote the following piece.

Today seems interminable

Sleep refuses to revive me or release me

or open its arms widely enough to hold me

Daggers and ripping in my belly like cold fire

Heavy lids and skipping heart teasing me

When darkness goes on forever and

daylight is no sweet relief or proof of God

each minute is like a notch on failure’s belt

A bitter reminder of all the ghosts

that hold open your eyes and gorge on your dwindling faith

The tears and the terror that lurk on the

edges of my dreams, my terrible dreams,

make me wish for a few more moments of

wakefulness in spite of my worn down body

During these hours I dabble in forgiveness

I almost allow myself to breathe deeply

as though unburdened by responsibility

I almost let my heart empty itself of its

terrible weights and measures

I almost sleep

Three beautiful bodies rest next to me

chests rising and falling with whispers of peace

A rhythm of hopefulness and prayer

that guides me through nightmares and sadness to

a beautiful dawn and one more chance

at forgiveness and sleep.

-May 03, 2006 (my daughter was just 4 months old, my son 2 years old)

I still have nights like this and I still have bouts with insomnia.  I still have all of those feelings at one point or another, but a miracle of sorts is taking place.  I was so afraid of being alone with my daughter when she was small because I didn’t want to stare my agony in the face and try to love it unconditionally while managing nightmares and laundry.  Now years later- I was afraid of being alone with her as my son started school because I never really had been and I certainly hadn’t done it regularly as a healing person.  Spending mornings and lunches and drives to school with my daughter in her big girl body has forced me to realize that my life kept going when I thought it wouldn’t.  I didn’t die from hidden misery, the push of frantic, imaginary perfection or even the breakdown that eventually came.

My daughter helps me see with clarity so much that once was obscured. I am sure this year will be one of great growth for both of us.  I am still looking for chances to forgive both myself and others and I hope that I find more.  I am still looking for sleep but now I am not always fearful of it or conversely trying to escape within it- most of the time it is just a need for sleep.  After dropping my wonderful son at school I can enjoy looking at my daughter and seeing her beauty, grace, intelligence and humor- not a terrible delivery, medical professionals who failed me or someone to whom I owe a debt for years lost because of mommy’s craziness and failure.  I can look and see a reflection of myself that is not the terrible one I spent so long wrestling with when she was so tiny.  During our time together, Mommy and sweet girl on our own, we are teaching each other.  I get a new way of moving towards forgiveness and restful nights.  She wrote the word “fairy” all on her own just yesterday.  She dreams of fairies and I am happy just to dream.

I’ve been in a not so good place for a few weeks now.  I keep running through the list of possible reasons, and I’ve settled with the prognosis of “it is what it is”.

I have friends with Jerry Springer lives that I want to solve, or at the very least ease their discomfort.  Helping is not an option, I have to just walk with them and love them as we go along.

Sometimes it is as if I am walking through a world of grenades, and I have to be constantly aware of my position.  Everywhere I turn, there is unbearable crazy and if I am not careful I will fall into one of the pits.

Maybe others just shrug off their crazy family and friends.  I try to do that, really I do.  Some days it’s an obtainable option.  Pretending that I am somehow trapped in a book about the lives of others and it’s all some type of fiction.

One person has quit their job in order to pursue the life of BDSM, not worrying about the future or about their children and the effect it will have on them.  Another can’t stop shooting dope, has no interest in sobering up for her child.  A man that told me his sisters had sex with each other after drinking entirely too much alcohol.

The soccer mom that drinks and smokes pot before she picks up her kids from school.  A friend that  in order to bear the pain of losing their nine year marriage is looking for solace in the online sex world.  A person told me recently that if Obama had run for president a few years ago, he’d be dead by now (because of his skin color) and the person speaking wouldn’t be upset about it.

A person that blames their ex spouse for everything that’s ever been wrong in their life for the past forty years, debilitated and held prisoner by the hate and resentment.

Parents with over sexual children that usually indicates some type of sexual abuse, but unable to investigate further.  People who lie all of the time, so much that they’ve lost the truth in it somewhere along the way.

A man who must hide his sexual interests and live a double life, a man who’s been depressed and unhappy for years.

(Some of the details are changed to protect their identities.)

I am personally connected to living post secret postcards.

More often than I’d like, I wonder if I will eventually drown in this sea of crazy.  I wonder if the whole world is bonkers and I am the only one that sees how insane all of this is.

My friends trust that when they are speaking with me that I will listen to their deepest secrets, knowing they will not receive any judgment from me.  This is very important to me, to provide a safe place for my friends to unload their burdens.

I am not judging them as I write this, I love each and every one of them, and I accept them for who they are.

Sometimes, it just gets really heavy and I start seeing too much, hearing too much, and feeling too much.   I’m not complaining, I’m not unhappy with them, I’m just writing it out because things are not always as clear when they are stuck in my head.

I don’t leave things alone as much as I should.

I love too much.

I care too much.

I feel too much.

I worry too much.

I project too much.

My brain is a computer that cannot stop processing, processing, and processing over and over until I fall away with exhaustion and have to leave the world for a few days.

When I don’t answer the phone or return emails or go outside, it is because I am regrouping, I am resetting my controls, I am finding peace.  I’ll come back.

Eventually.