An angry, open letter to my mental illness,

You make my life so much harder than necessary.

I cannot bring myself to take care of basic needs when you’re around. Eating becomes obsolete; showers are replaced by deodorant and baby powder on my scalp and in my hair. I can’t bring myself to do my work some days.

Even walking becomes a task, when I feel like I have to step on every crack I walk over with the exact same part of my foot, an odd number of times per foot until I reach my destination. The result? I have to leave early because I know how much time it will consume.

Leaving early, of course, is nearly impossible when you’ve slept less than four hours the night before. It becomes even harder when you can’t drink coffee because the smell of anything makes you want to puke.

Doing my work becomes twenty times more difficult when all I want to do is sleep. I want to sleep so badly I cry about it. So I try to take a quick pick-me-up nap, but of course, I never can, so I end up wasting time and putting myself in a position to rush everything. Pushing deadlines is my specialty.

I cry often. I cry about small things and big things. I cry about chairs not being equal distances from one another; I cry about the fact that one wrist sits further off the desk than the other when I type; I cry about colors sometimes, because they’re great colors and nobody knows how good they are. I think it’s a shame that you don’t know how great a color cerulean is.

But I also cry because it seems like no matter how far I go with my recovery, I always end up right back in the same room as you. I cry because everyone — everyone — thinks I’m doing so well, because that’s what I’ve told them. But I’ve been telling them lies, and that makes me sad. I don’t like being lied to, so they probably don’t either.

But it’s you, my illness, that pushes me to tell those lies. You convince me that they’ll be disappointed and give up on me; you convince me that if they aren’t disappointed, they just must not care about me at all. You convince me that if they don’t care, it’s, of course, my fault, because it just is.

You convince me that I am the villain in this play.

You convince me that you are the puppeteer.

But you are not my puppeteer. I am yours.

I am the one in control of this relationship. I do not have to step on every crack the same way. The chairs can do as they please, and so can I. You will let me sleep, you will let me eat, I will shower, I will brush my teeth and I will comb my hair.

I will win.