I hope this is more indicative of me being crazy than me being infected with a high-profile pathogen

but I'm smelling cigarette smoke EVERYWHERE in the house.

Nobody else smells it. Nobody here smokes. We can't even light candles in the house because of Dad's oxygen machine.

And I don't like it. It's almost making me gag.

Darkness and peace

I'm sitting in the half-dark watching and listening to my mom as she struggles to find a peaceful, restful balance between gasp-inducing pain and the loopy uncertainties of prescription pain medication 36 hours after undergoing shoulder surgery. She was told she'll probably need to sleep in a recliner for 6-8 weeks as she recovers, so she's now wrapped in an almost structural configuration of blankets and pillows arranged to keep her comfortable and stabilized and not too hot and not too cold on a borrowed electric recliner in our living room as I sleep on the nearby couch with a three-hour alarm set in perpetuity on my phone to ensure I give her her pain medications consistently on time.

This woman spearheaded a full-family battle for my health and my very sanity for years as my escalating bipolar depression clashed with a literally bewildering array of ramp-up and withdrawal side effects from increasingly desperate attempts to find the right cocktail of psych medications for me. My parents have helplessly watched me twitch and yell in my sleep, crawl like a blinded animal up the stairs from a drug-onset migraine, lie gray and unmoving in a hell of despondency in my bed, land in the ER after a blackout and a crash to the floor that was so catastrophic that the nurses assumed I was the victim of a violent assault, and stare emptily but gratefully back at them as they admitted me to a locked psych ward for what ended up being an eight-day stay. They've fought for me, they've stood by me, they've repatriated me ... and now it's my turn to start paying them back.

Mom seemed to be doing remarkably well in the first 24 hours after her surgery, but then the last of the nerve block wore off and waves of breathtaking pain started surging through her reawakened nerve channels, and we've watched helplessly as she's whimpered and cried and tried to keep a brave face through her pain and confusion and unsure self-awareness. But she knows she's loved and being cared for and watched over with the attentiveness she's given my whole family over the years. And she seems to be sleeping comfortably and productively at the moment.

I should be asleep right now too. The couch is all made up next to me and it's quite comfortable; this I know from endless days into nights into days that I spent on it as I fought my way back to sanity while sleeping as close to my parents as I could if I needed anything. But I'm rather enjoying sitting here with her in the dark, post-midnight quiet. The war-zone explosions of fireworks that kept alarming her and waking her up a few hours ago have died down, I just woke her to give her her midnight pain meds and a popsicle, she seems to finally be sleeping comfortably and restfully ... and her partial helplessness and need for me have me thinking that there will soon be more medical problems and more nights like this for both my parents ... until they simply won't have any more medical problems ever again. And I want to remember and savor these moments where I can care for and love them the way they have done for me.

When I got out of the hospital two and a half years ago and spent the next two years fighting to regain my own sense of normal, it became clear that I was going to spend this newest chapter of my life under their care. In return, I've promised them that I'll do everything in my power to keep them in their—our—home as long as I can as they get older. Because I can't imagine taking care of them any other way.

So here I sit. Watching the mother who showed me without fear or reservation how to love me and all my psychoses unconditionally as she suffers through what by all accounts will be a painful but successful healing process. But it is undeniably a harbinger of the future in our home. Which is scary in the abstract. But right now it's a present and a future managed with love and commitment and a deep, profound honor that I am able—in no small part from the lessons and examples my parents have provided for me all throughout their selfless lives—to care for them in the way they cared for me.

And it's all very peaceful.

My little New Year's Eve gathering fell through tonight

So I'm sitting home alone (well, my parents are snoring contentedly in their bedroom down the hall) by the light of the tree with Bitch Kitty glaring at me from across the room and a LOT of oh-my-god-these-are-AMAZING Hy-Vee fudge brownies on the counter. And if you don't live in a Hy-Vee state, it pains me to tell you this but you have wasted your entire life eating really shitty brownies.

But from my safe, cozy—albeit admittedly lonely—perch on our extremely comfortable couch in these last hours of an emotionally contentious year where our country seems to have lost a disproportionately high number of beloved celebrities but I landed a job I love in practically every way and where I have continued to ramp up and ramp down and suffer side effects and endure withdrawal effects of countless psychotropics in my ongoing struggle to beat bipolar depression but in the process my love and appreciation and respect for my family have grown stronger and deeper and more joyous and hopefully more reciprocal, I can't help but harbor grave concerns about the coming year.

I'm concerned to the point of being terrified of the pending horrors wrought from the blind nationalism and the arrogant ignorance of the inchoate and yet already alarmingly destructive Trump kakistocracy. I worry that the gloriously revolutionary American Experiment will fall way too early in its young life at the hands of a predatory, self-serving demagogue who stupidly let himself become a political puppet in a game of nuclear chicken that could precipitate national, international or global destruction. I also worry greatly that our educational systems and standards and our national and local infrastructures and our economy and our safety and even our civility will collapse in the process or the aftermath.

On a personal scale, I worry that friendships will end and loved ones will die and control will collapse and accidents will cripple and ideologies will interfere and dreams will fail and fortunes both monetary and emotional will fall and I know these worries are universal and though they can easily isolate us they can also unite and inspire and ultimately augment us, but they still compel me to hold my family and friends close and keep my guard up and my emotions girded and my world as calm and controlled and constant as I humanly can.

So much can change in 365 days. Three years ago I wrote international ad campaigns for a prestigious agency in Chicago. Two years ago I was in a locked psych ward, so pharmaceutically emotionless I couldn't even cry. One year ago I was somehow holding onto a job I wasn't even good at but I was apparently charming or earnest or possibly overlookable enough that I survived months of staff reductions. Now I'm proudly living with—and providing reciprocal care for—my septuagenarian parents, working happily as an online product copywriter for a gloriously high-end international retailer, regularly singing and dancing and acting and sometimes just smiling and waving in shows for three different theater companies, discovering the unimaginable joy and love and pride of playing uncle to two intelligent and kind and talented and responsible and remarkably tall young adults who thankfully possess an inherent and reciprocal and mutually straight-faced understanding of my meandering and maybe-just-a-little-bit-perhaps-over-the-line sense of humor, and still clinging confidently to the hope that I will soon find the right psychotropic cocktail to regulate my bipolar depression plus find a boyfriend who loves theater and Hy-Vee brownies and running and tattoos and underpants jokes and freakishly conspicuously indulgently long sentences and living in Cedar Rapids where hopefully our entire families are.

So I face this new year with great but guarded trepidation tempered by a glorious spectrum of hope and joy and gratitude and love and oh-my-god too many shoes and a fervent hope that the coming months are filled with peace and diplomacy and respect and common sense and a governance guided by a deep, profound, nuanced, reciprocal knowledge and understanding of who we are, what is fair, how we're responsible, and the selfish and bellicose and irreversible and potentially catastrophic options we should never even pursue.

And—you're welcome—to end this post and start this year on a far less cataclysmic note, I can report with complete confidence that (at the very least) the first months of 2017 will be filled with staggeringly long, shamelessly self-indulgent, thesaurusly verbose, hopefully thoughtful, possibly funny, relentlessly selfie-enhanced posts.

And since tonight's get-together didn't happen, the dawn of our new year will also be filled with Hy-Vee brownies. Lots and lots of Hy-Vee brownies.

Happy New Year, everyone.

EPILOGUE TO LAST NIGHT'S FESTIVAL OF MORBIDITY

I apologize for dragging you all down my feral rabbit hole last night. My depressive episodes tend to hit hard and fast and they don't play fair. But I've lately found an unexpected and highly illusory eye-of-the-storm place of Zen when I've slammed into the bottom of the hole. Unfortunately, that's where it always seems like a super-awesome opportunity to text emotionally unprepared friends or make epic, increasingly graphic posts that repeatedly use derivatives of the the word despondent. Thankfully, last night's post was not accompanied by an artfully cropped sad-face photo or the lyrics to "Soft Kitty." Anyway, as per the protocol established in the Fucking Stupid Depression I Hate You I Hate You I Hate You Treaty of 1968, my episodes tend to dissolve quite rapidly after 2-3 days. So—after an explanatory epilogue I've allowed to go on way too long—here we are: the end of my morbid monologue on depression and death.

But. Not really.

Do you see that handsome wooden box on the left in this picture? Our very handy neighbor made it from the polished walnut backings of some of the award plaques my dad received in his 50+ years in real estate. Do you see the handsome metallic embellishment on the lid? That's my dad's army dog tag, which our very handy neighbor artfully embedded in masculine bas relief in what I remind you is solid walnut, which is quite solid.

Now.

Do you know what that handsome dog-tag-embellished polished walnut box was constructed for? Do you? It's for my dad's ashes.

Let me repeat that: It's for my dad's ashes. 

Although he's still more or less alive by most medical and legal standards. On the one hand, I should deeply appreciate his forethought and careful planning for what will no doubt be a highly emotional occurrence somewhere in our future. On the other hand, he's currently displaying it under the antique marled-oak baluster-leg side table that's in many ways the focal point of our living room. So every time I walk into the living room and glance unavoidably in the general direction of our antique marled-oak baluster-leg side table, I'm confronted with the fact that HEY! YOUR DAD'S GONNA DIE!

Also.

Do you see the multi-finish, pounded-tin-cornered, faux-slatted wooden box on the right in this picture? It was sent to us filled with frosted holiday delectables by some dear New York friends and it currently occupies a place of honor on the sofa coffee table with the extremely paltry remainders of all the frosted holiday delectables we received this fattening holiday season.

And guess what! My mom, inspired by the forethought and careful planning demonstrated by my dad and discovering her own aesthetic liking for this multi-finish, pounded-tin-cornered, faux-slatted wooden box, has taken these two factors to their logical conclusion: She wants it for her ashes. 

And I bet you know what I'm going to say next: I sure take handsome photographs of boxes. 

But you'll probably also guess that I'm going to say that every time I walk in the living room and glance unavoidably at the place of honor on the sofa coffee table in an ill-advised quest for frosted holiday delectables that for some probably readily discernible reason remain to this day uneaten, I'm confronted with the fact that HEY! YOUR MOM'S GONNA DIE!

Tune in to my next post when I tell you all about Monday's blackout, face plant, concussion and run-in with the cops at the ER! For realz!

The big picture

It's 11:30 pm and in this slightly dark and judiciously cropped tree selfie, Christmas at our house looks postcard-perfect. But in reality there are boxes and bills and blankets and coats and wet shoes and easily 20 bottles of meds and folding tables and stuff to clean up sick-cat barf and plates of half-eaten cookies and basically something that needs time and attention on every counter, table and square foot of floor space in sight. It's exhausting and defeating just to look at. And none of us is sure how it got this bad.

But in the big picture, it's small stuff. And it really doesn't matter. I moved home two years ago in part to take care of my dad. And I'm thrilled to do it. I drove him to two doctor appointments today and helped get him changed for an X-ray and we drove to the hardware store to get him a rubber tip for his cane and we had lunch and got some Christmas stuff and took our kitty—who is actually pretty sick—to the vet, where he proudly told the doctor that HIS dad had been a vet, and it was an honor and a joy that I'm here to take care of him. And tomorrow we start all over again with two more doctor appointments and more Christmas shopping and probably lunch and I'm going to remember and savor every moment of it because when he's no longer here I can look back and say "I took care of my dad. And we had lunch. And we laughed at dumb stuff. And he told me stories about my relatives and what cool old buildings used to stand where in the city and where he and Mom lived before I was born and which of his friends who've died he really misses and how he hates to be blind and I took care of my dad."

And that street runs two ways. I've been on a two-year emotional roller coaster of bipolar highs and debilitating lows and lengthy hospitalizations and miserable, crushing side effects of taking and withdrawing from maybe 30 psychotropics (which, all things considered, I still think is a really cool word) and quite literally sleeping my life away as we try to find a med combination that doesn't make me unstable and embarrassingly fidgety and relentlessly, overwhelmingly drowsy. And my mom and dad have been my super-advocates all along, organizing my ever-EVER-changing meds, making up a bed for me on the couch on the days I can barely crawl home from work, making sure my insurance is up to date and I'm not missing a dizzying array of doctor appointments with a dizzying array of doctors and making me pot roast and Jell-O with fruit in it and in general just being awesome.

But we're not special; millions of families are facing millions of medical problems, some easier than ours and some crushingly harder. And millions of families also have messy houses, especially around the holidays. And there's a glaringly obvious metaphor in there that can be interpreted in positive or negative ways. For me, it's all good. We'll get the house picked up and back in order soon. My mom will eventually forgive me for announcing to all of Facebook that we live in pestilence and squalor. I'll get my meds—and my brain—straightened out. Mom and Dad will or won't get sicker or better and I'll be right here to take care of them.

And my slightly dark and judiciously cropped tree selfie might not show our struggles and messes, but it totally captures all the warmth and joy and love and—I'm sorry—really ugly ornaments in this house, in this family, in this world of uncertainty and unfairness and hope and fierce, unbreakable devotion.

Go, Team Jake!

Here's me and 4/7ths of Team Jake, who are on call 24/7 to provide wake-up calls and remind me to take my meds and send me random texts to remind me I'm loved and provide courtesy laughter for (most of) my dumb jokes and refuse to let me feel like I'm broken and give me big hugs out of nowhere and to tell me gently and respectfully that I have too many shoes, which, of course, I don't because there's no such thing as too many shoes but I play along with our little charade because it makes them feel appreciated and I genuinely appreciate every one of the things—both little and big—that they do for me. Because some days I really need to feel loved and every day they remind me that I am.

How to keep your friendly neighborhood pharmacy solvent:

I mean seriously. And I take just as many meds in the mornings as well. Granted, about a fourth of my daily pill pile—which is a totally awesome band name—is OTC stuff with purported powers to control the side effects of all this pharmacology. But none of any of it seems to be working for shit. I'm still shaky and chompy and chubby-tummied and chronically, relentlessly exhausted. I'm still struggling to claw my way out of deepening pits of depression on an almost weekly basis. The unnerving and sometimes terrifying symptoms of my Cymbalta withdrawal seem to be escalating. And I'm weaning myself off of Abilify next. BECAUSE NONE OF IT SEEMS TO BE WORKING. Despite my many plans to the contrary, I pretty much slept my way through this entire weekend. I didn't go to a play I had tickets for. I didn't help my brother-in-law paint his house. I didn't do any half-marathon training. I didn't go to our neighborhood block party. I didn't even take a fucking shower.

But I have hope. And the greatest support network a bipolar person could ever ask for. And the ability to sit back objectively and make fun of the absurd and ridiculous stuff. And the delusion that I can stubbornly will myself to get better. But not, unfortunately, the ability to swallow two daily handfuls of pills without violently gagging. And clearly I don't have the self-control—or maybe just the self-sufficiency—to shut up about it all on social media. Which, on some levels, makes all of you part of my support network too. Which I suspect may be my subconscious goal with all this whining. So sorry to drag you all into my mental drama here. But thanks for playing along. I'm going to sleep now. Which I'm really good at; I practiced all weekend.