On Metaphors and Snow Boots

The strata of five snowfalls cover the ground as I climb out of bed one February morning. Ice-powder-ice-powder-ice: they lie according to the usual pattern of Iowa winters, when the days between storms bring just enough sun to melt the top layers, and the nights refreeze everything into a temperamental crust. Any trip across the lawn — from door to mailbox, from mailbox to car — is likely to be punctuated by falling. Only sometimes will the ice hold my weight.

I set about making tea, gently assessing my own internal strata. I pull the screaming kettle off the range, fill the teapot, and carry it to my desk, where I idly shuffle some papers instead of starting work. A few fat flakes drift past the window. I’ve been trying to hate my mental illness less, to be less divided, to not view my anxiety as a scrim separating me from myself, from the life I could be living. The one I’m caught in is marked by paralyzed muscles, quickened breathing, racing thoughts: Think, Annie, think, what a mess you are in, how on earth will you get yourself out this time.

The flakes blow loosely over the crust of what’s already fallen. Still putting off emails, I tug one sheet of paper from the stack I just made and scrawl idly in the margin: “The particular latitude of your mind invites many storms.”

In , Sonya Huber writes about the rheumatoid arthritis that began plaguing her with near-constant pain in her thirties. She notes that living with a chronic illness can heighten a common mental trap: the tendency to treat our imperfect existences as if they were