Puzzling

 

 Mental Illness

My life is a puzzle. Like everyone else on the planet, I have thousands of pieces to put together. Sometimes puzzles are satisfying and enjoyable. Sometimes puzzles are frustrating and impossible. You can’t always tell how the pieces are going to go together from one day to the next. Will they snap into place and fit perfectly- or will you try and fail again and again to find the right fit?

Mental illness makes it all much more complex and much more fragile. 

Sometimes I feel like things are going well and everything is falling into place- and then one little bump knocks all the pieces akilter and it falls apart into shambles. Sometimes nothing seems to fit or come together at all and things are just a mess from the first minute. Sometimes the pieces do all form a beautiful picture and I can stand back a little and admire the gift of the masterpiece.

As a wife and mother, it is imperative that I keep at this puzzle. I have to keep the pieces together for my family. There are people counting on me and I so much want to please and bless them….but when nothing is interlocking and everything feels dissected it is just plan hard. Sometimes impossible.  Sometimes there just are missing pieces- pieces that may turn up eventually but they aren’t on the table for me right now. So I do my best to hold together what I do have and not lose any ground.

My brain is a puzzle that will never truly be completed. Every day I will wake up to the pieces awaiting my attempts.