Timber!

Eight years ago today—three years after leaving the hospital and just hours after taking the very first dose of yet another new bipolar med added to my ever-evolving cocktail—I stood up from a chair, walked a couple steps, blacked completely the hell out, fell Timber! onto the tile floor (which I cracked with my face because GO BIG OR GO HOME), shredded myself eyebrow-to-chin on my shattered glasses, bit most of the way through my lip, loosened some teeth, got a concussion, and woke up in my sister's car holding a huge bloody rag to my face too confused to remember that Christmas had happened (or, for just a few glorious moments, that I was even bipolar) as she rushed me to the ER, where I looked so brutally horrifying that the nurses assumed I was the victim of a violent assault and three police officers were dispatched my room to question me well before the doctor showed up to assess the damage, declare me not dead and give me double-digit stitches.

I came home covered in swelling and bruises and scabs and stitches and glue—after telling the ER doctor in my foggy haze that my modeling days were over and I didn't care if he left scars all over my face but I vaguely remember him informing me that he still had a professional obligation to do his best—and filled eyeballs-to-spine with a deep, not-for-amateurs headache that brought crippling new levels to my understanding of pain ... and yet I still found a way to take time out of my busy schedule for a quick selfie to document the occasion for future biographers. (You're welcome, posterity!)
This Timber! event was directly linked to my new drug (called Fetzima, who sounds like a possibly immodest resident of the Anatevka demimonde in Fiddler on the Roof) that, as with all psychotropics, came with an alarming list of ramp-up side effects ... including abrupt blackouts. But I knew from a decade-plus of trial-and-error experience that I needed to tough out the first three or four weeks until the side effects subsided and the drug's level (or not level) of efficacy manifested (or didn't manifest) itself.

And despite its hyperdramatic entrance into the madcap musical of my life, Fetzima more-or-less quickly proved itself to be perhaps the drug that effectively balances my serotonin and norepinephrine and keeps me (more or less) stable and engaged and functional and capable and able to go to work and do shows and take care of my parents and run races and do handyman projects (quite well, if I can toot my own horn, which I shamelessly will) and practice the piano and buy shoes and buy more shoes and here I am eight years later, scar-free (thanks, conscientiously ethical ER doctor!) (though it took a good six months for the scars to heal and the scar tissue where I bit through my lip to subside to the point that I could drink out of a straw again) and concussion-free (pro tip: you DO. NOT. EVER. want a concussion), and clearly in possession of an added year's mouth wrinkles and silver foxiness.

[Super-fun side note: Aetna, in its infinite wisdom, abruptly stopped covering my Fetzima for two years and summarily rejected all three of my doctor’s allotted appeals. Because apparently risking sending me to the psych ward for another week was far more cost-effective than covering a proven psychotropic. So my doctor hoarded samples for me in the hope that Aetna would finally get its head out of its fetz (which it finally did last year) and/or Fetzima’s patent would expire, it went generic and it stopped costing $700/month out of pocket (which has yet to happen).]

Anyway, if you're inclined, raise a glass and yell Timber! in my scab-free, concussion-free, fog-free, not-functional-free honor today. I'm gonna go out and keep living. Timber!