Mental Health Awareness Month: This Blog

My 2008 bipolar diagnosis suddenly made sense of all the weirdnesses floating around in my head: plunging depressions, paranoias, social anxieties, impulsive behaviors, suicidal ideation, big ideas without consequences alarms, racing thoughts, abject terror in social situations (I once had a full-on panic attack when I opened a party invitation that came in the mail) (remember getting party invitations in the mail?) …

Newly armed with a name for the collective demons I faced, I started fighting back (or at least trying to manage my world) with everything I had at my disposal—which at the beginning wasn't much because my doctor didn’t think I needed medication. So I launched into a homemade cocktail of deep breaths, internal pep talks, more-informed behaviors and decisions, reading everything I could find, looking for a new doctor who might have more powerful (i.e., pharmaceutical) tools for me to use … and the expectation that I might at any moment need to just retreat to the safety of my Chicago condo in the sky to regroup and start again the next day.

I also became self-aware enough to start being embarrassed by things I did in public … mostly bouncing around as though I were on fire, being so down I’d no-show at events I promised to attend, and in more than one instance literally running away when someone tried to introduce me to a friend.
So I did what any self-respecting writer would do: I turned to social media to start explaining myself and apologizing for being so damn weird. And to my surprise, I almost immediately started getting understanding, support … and thanks from people in similar situations for being so open about my mental illness and the challenges it brought me.

Eventually someone suggested that I start a blog to document my thoughts, feelings, experiences, and the highs and lows of my journey. So I launched TMIpolar (get it? It’s BI polar but I overshare so it’s TMI polar, which I will go to my grave thinking is one of my most clever linguistic inventions) and backfilled it with everything I’d posted and started filling it with my new adventures.

There is also a book in the works, but the prospect of organizing my thoughts into something approaching legitimate book form is so overwhelming that you shouldn’t start looking for it in bookstores until 2095.

In a weird way to think this is unfortunate, I unfortunately have been so stable in the last few years that I haven’t had much to post about any noteworthy ups and downs of my personal journey. But I’ve aggregated all my Mental Health Awareness Month essays along with other essays/thoughts/reviews/etc here for my own—along with anyone else’s—reference.

So scroll through my ramblings and even bookmark the site if you want. I’ve spent ridiculous amounts of time organizing things by keywords for your perusing convenience. And I hope it helps (or at the very least entertains) you if you find you need it.

This shirt may be the best part of my day

When your damn hip injury seems to be creeping up into your lower back so you still can't run and it's a cool overcast day which is your favorite running weather but it's still your favorite weather for anything and your candidate won the Democratic gubernatorial primary last night and you found a totally cool stretch-cotton batik-print paisley polo this morning that you'd forgotten you had and your car is so totally clean and free of clutter that you can actually take a wide-view selfie to show off the back seat and even though you're a little bit bipolar-foggy today you're still functional enough to write a staggeringly long run-on sentence that technically has neither a subject nor a predicate but you're a writer and you can get away with such brazen linguistic abominationness plus you make up words with shameless abandon plus you end blog posts with needless prepositions at.

I just had my six-week checkup

(I'm still crazypants biploar but things continue to be stable and we're not altering my meds this time, thanks for asking) and when my psychiatrist met me in the waiting room she asked me if it was OK if a residency doctor observed my visit and of course I said yes because I'm clearly not a hide-my-crazypants-biploarness person and when we got to her office and she opened the door and he was politely standing there waiting to shake hands and introduce himself OH MY GOD HE WAS TALL AND HANDSOME AND LET'S NOT MINCE WORDS HERE HOT HOT HOT and we sat down for my visit but I kept looking over at his let's still not mince words here sexy forearms because that's all I could see besides his face because he rudely wasn't wearing a Speedo and WHY ARE YOU SO HOT STOP DISTRACTING ME and we talked about all the usual stuff like my moods and my appetite and my feelings of control and my ability to concen OH MY GOD I CAN'T CONCENTRATE BECAUSE JUST LOOK AT HIM HE'S TOO HOT TO WALK THIS EARTH trate and any side effects of my meds (still lingering exhaustion, but thankfully it's not 24 hours a day like it has been) and is there anything else I think would be relevant to tell her WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO ME HAVE YOU EVEN NOTICED THE LET'S AGAIN NOT MINCE WORDS HERE HOT HOT HOT MAN WHO'S ABOUT TO BE A DOCTOR AND I THINK WE CAN ALL AGREE IT WOULD BE A VERY GOOD THING FOR ME TO MARRY A DOCTOR AND HE'S SITTING IN THAT CHAIR RIGHT THERE SO CLOSE I COULD STARE AT HIM FOR HOURS WHOOPS I JUST DID and I said that I've actually ramped up the activities in my life like Follies rehearsals and editing a massive book pro bono and making my bedroom renovation finally really start to happen and cleaning out the storage room in our basement AND WHY WHY WHY DOES THIS INSANELY HANDSOME MAN HAVE TO KNOW I'M CRAZYPANTS BIPOLAR PLUS NOW HAVE A DOCTOR-PATIENT RELATIONSHIP WITH ME BECAUSE THAT PRETTY MUCH GUARANTEES THAT'S THE ONLY KIND OF RELATIONSHIP WE'LL EVER HAVE BUT HOLY SHIT WE'D LOOK HANDSOME IN OUR WEDDING PHOTOS and she gave me some more free samples of my really expensive medication and we scheduled my next six-week visit AND FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS GOOD AND HOLY MAKE SURE HE'S STILL RESIDENTING WITH YOU WHEN I GET BACK IN SIX WEEKS and I think we had a really productive visit.

New magnetic poles

I tell myself I always know when a bipolar depressive episode is hitting me. I get achingly tired, but I also get TIRED. Despondent. Hoarse. Blurry. I can feel myself teetering off the precipice, but once I gauge the velocity of the free-fall, I know whether I can at least fight it or if I just have to give in, hide under the pillows and wait out the drenching storm. But at least I KNOW.

This morning I woke up profoundly exhausted. So I did my usual things that help pull me out of a rough morning fog: talk to my parents, eat something sweet, play on Facebook, start the momentum of my day by getting dressed for the gym and packing up my clothes for work. But ... nothing. I didn't feel like I was depressed, but I just couldn't un-tired myself.

My doctors have been making minute changes to the dosages of my psych meds since early summer (and if you've never had a cut-up fourth of a tiny, chalky little pill completely short-circuit your brain, you look like you're frolicking in the warm sunshine from the foggy window I've been peering through off and on for the last few months) and I've had plenty of exhausted mornings because of it. Again, in those instances either I've tried to push through and wander about the motions of my day or turn off the lights and hope I can sleep without the bipolar-attendant nightmares.

Today I gave in. I emailed my boss, I set my alarm for noon on the off chance all I needed was a half day of sleep and curled up in a ball. I could tell I was on the upswing when my alarm saved me from the amorphous demons prowling around in my dreams, but -- as is becoming the new pattern -- I couldn't gauge when or even how I was going to arrive back at normal. I just didn't KNOW.

Depression is not sadness. It's not a lack of happiness. The verbs choose and decide and control don't have anything to do with making it happen or making it go away. Depression is misfiring synapses and out-of-code wiring and we're still learning what else that cause fog and blur and despondency and sandbags and wet wool blankets wrapped around our heads and emotive responses that are completely unrelated to and sometimes completely inappropriate for the situations and environments and world around us. It's stupid. It's destructive. It's embarrassing. It's time-wasting and pain-causing and life-destroying.

It's exhausting. I'm exhausted. I'm STILL exhausted.

And the compass I've been using to steer my ship out of my exhaustion is suddenly fixed to new magnetic poles. And I don't know where they are. I can search for them only when I'm having a depressive episode, and I haven't located them yet. I. Just. Can't. Find. Them.

My life is pretty awesome right now. I'm surrounded by family and friends who love and support me. I have a job I love working for an understanding boss and a company I respect. I'm taking on writing projects that are big and small and fun and high-profile and just-because and I'm relishing every word of them. I'm not just doing tons of really awesome theater, but I also finally feel confident that I'm actually contributing to what's making it good. The city I grew up in and just came back to and will always love is rising from the destruction of a catastrophic flood to experience a full-on renaissance in everything from architecture to culture to public amenities to recreation to community redevelopment, and I love taking small detours and out-of-the-way routes and the time to stop and take pictures just so I can try to see and learn about it all. Plus I keep getting told I don't look anywhere near my age. Which when you're my age is HUGE.

Like all bipolar depressives past, present and hopefully not much longer into the future, I tell myself that I won't let my depression control me, that I won't allow it to interfere with my life, that I'm better and stronger and more willful than it is, that I'll never let it win. And through pharmaceutical powers whose lingering uncertainties and dartboard guesswork sometimes feel almost Medieval, through a potent mix of hope and willpower and sometimes desperation, through the immeasurably therapeutic benefits of broadcasting all my battles on social media and my blog, through the light that eventually pierces the fog to remind me about the wondrous life that awaits me when I get back to my normal—and especially through the tireless and certifiably saintly effort and devotion and support of my mom and the rest of my family—I've learned and I'm going to keep re-learning as the poles change how to manage this ... if not beat it.

After years and years of bipolar episodes that left me hidden in my bed, I still always feel guilty when I miss a day of work because of one. But it happens. And it's going to keep happening. And it happened today. Even though as of this writing the fog has cleared enough for me to write ten (and counting!) paragraphs about it, I'm still not sure what exactly happened today or where it falls on the exhaustion-depression continuum or what I was able to learn from it that I can use when the time comes to fight my way out of or give in to or maybe just try to manage the next episode.

But I have that awesome life to live. And I have that wonderful, fun, creative, educational job to go to. And I have lines to learn and music to memorize and tap classes to take and show tunes to listen to. And I have people counting on me. And I want to be there for them, for whatever it is they're counting on me for. So even though I'm still foggy and still trying to suss out a viable coping mechanism from today's episode, I'm up and moving and participating as hard as I can so I don't miss a moment of anything.

And this one-sentence closing paragraph takes the count to twelve.

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.

Here's some friendly midnight advice from your crazy Uncle Jake:

If any doctor tries to prescribe a psychotropic drug for you, the FIRST thing you need to ask about are the withdrawal side effects you'll endure when you stop taking it, which—trust me—you eventually will. The ramp-up and day-to-day side effects of taking psychotropics definitely come with their challenges, most of which are a welcome trade-off for eliminating the mental-illness symptoms they were prescribed for. But eventually something in your head will change for the worse and your doctor will start to tinker (rather blindly) with the drug or cocktail of drugs you've been having success with. And the fallout can be unpredictable and devastating.

I ended a seven-year relationship with Abilify over a week ago because within the last year I'd developed a hefty case of tardive dyskinesia that made my legs shake involuntarily, uncontrollably and—most important—embarrassingly. And my current doctor was pretty maybe kinda sure Abilify was the culprit. And at first it seemed she was right. The leg shaking started disappearing almost from the moment I started tapering my dosage.

But.

The leg shaking seems to have been replaced with a three-ring circus of embarrassing side effects: involuntary eye rolling, power squinting, face rubbing, scalp swirling, nose pinching, beard rubbing, chomping, grunting, hyperventilating, spasms down the back of my neck, and an increasingly obvious sense of fogginess and confusion—all of which started manifesting themselves since I took my final tapered dose of Abilify. I'm so miserable I can hardly stand it. And my face is raw from the constant rubbing.

I have two choices: Go back on Abilify and (maybe) trade back my new side effects for my old ones, or stay the course and endure the withdrawal side effects until they (hopefully) go away. I have NO intention of reliving the withdrawal side effects I've survived to date so I'm going to stick with the plan and hope for the best. But I can honesty say that if the doctor who first prescribed Abilify for me could have impressed on me the degree of severity and misery I'd have to endure in my eventual withdrawal, there's no way I would have started taking it. There have been entire days over this last week where depression seemed exponentially easier to endure than withdrawal. Hands down.

You know that fogginess and confusion I mentioned two paragraphs ago? And you also know how in real life I'm a professional writer with (if I may indulge in some immodest immodesty) a quick wit and some mad typing skilz?

It took me almost two hours of intense concentration and multiple fits of intense face rubbing to write this, what should have been a 20-minute post. And I'm beyond the capability of proofing it.

Thank you

As anyone who spends more than a few seconds on social media every month probably knows, I'm bipolar. As probably nobody knows, my bipolar depression got so acute and so scary that I spent the week of Christmas in a psych ward. It was there that I decided I needed to move home to Iowa to help take care of my dad—who has lost his sight to macular degeneration—and where my family could take care of me. It was also where I told myself if I really did move to Iowa I'd get involved in the theater again. Now fast-forward four months. I've already done one show, and tonight marks the point where I am for the first time in my life doing two shows simultaneously. I start rehearsals for A Chorus Line tonight and I open Barefoot in the Park this Friday. Plus I have a kick-ass job. Plus my meds are working so well I forget what it's like to be manic until my increasingly rare manic waves hit me. And I honestly can't remember the last depressive episode I had. (Then again, huge chunks of my manic episodes are a blur too. Which is both a blessing and a curse of being bipolar.) I owe A LOT to so many friends and family members and social-media acquaintances who have believed in me and given me encouraging words and friendly hellos—and parts in theatrical productions—and I don't even know how to begin showing my gratitude. Which is a lot to say for a professional writer who usually can't shut up. So I'm showing my gratitude by living my life and enjoying what it brings to me and believing in myself even when I don't really believe in myself. I love my family, I love my friends and I love my life. And I send an epic thank you to everyone who's helped get me here.