Monday, March 23, 2015

Properly Shelled

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Sunday was productive.

Yes. That’s what I’d like to call it.

Quite literally tons of “administrative” work was done on The Hushing Days. With one of the three chief relationships all written up and fleshed out, I am ready to tackle Couple #2. This lucky pair’s plot has been carefully removed from the story-whole and is ready for some one-on-one time with the author.

This should leave me ecstatic.

Should.

But…

Yesterday was a foul mind day. Indulge me for just a moment and I’ll explain.

Consider the life of an armadillo.

He lugs around a big, unwieldy, leathery shell that protects him from most un-Volkswagen-sized nasties. That’s all well and good, but have you ever considered how much that ugly contraption weighs? Really. Have you ever seen a truly giddy armadillo?

Living with a mental illness is a lot like an armadillo’s life. The shell that we are forced to wear to survive in this world (i.e. Prozac, coping techniques, desperate patience, oftentimes desperate hope) is exhausting to carry around all the time. Really. I’m mentally pooped each and every night of my life.

Well, yesterday, the little armadillo named Chloe flagged exhaustion and crawled out of her carefully-orchestrated shell.

Yep. I didn’t even try to stop the OCD tendencies, the doom brokers, the little hairy beasts of depression from running me over.

Soft little underbelly to the sky, I rolled over sans-shell and said to my mental nasties, “Go ahead, flail away!”

So, that’s what they did.

I worked and worked and worked from pre-dawn to 60 seconds to bedtime, manically attacking this book, the next book, three books thereafter…

*sighs*

It was all rather stupid of me.

I need my shell.  Even though it’s a pain to crawl into every day, there’s a reason I’m an armadillo.

So, the shell is back on this morning. There will be no more flailing by any nasty, thank you very much.

And here ends today’s rather hard-crusted tale.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe in shell

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