Erica Russell IS…Xanax, Warrior Princess

Look Ma! No crippling depression!

It has been quite a while since I have posted here, in part because this blog has served primarily as a therapeutic exercise for me during difficult times. Now that those difficult times are fewer and further between, I have less cause to pour my heart out here. I admit, I’m a little conflicted about keeping the blog public. Going back and reading through it is a little hard for me, because it’s a chapter in my life that I would prefer to remain closed. However, the comments and messages I receive from readers have convinced me to leave it up.

I was especially touched by a comment on my last post. It was from a therapist I have never even met who somehow stumbled upon my entry from when I had just left treatment. She said she was going to share it with a patient of hers who was going through a similar struggle. That meant the world to me, and reminded me that my rare and perhaps controversial openness does have the power to help people, or at least make them feel less alone. My heart goes out to all those coping with mental health issues, and take it from me, there IS such a thing as remission. Popular opinion seems to suggest that remission is an impossibility with regard to mental illness; once you’re labeled “crazy,” you’re crazy for life. I’m here to tell you, that’s absolute bullshit. It’s like any other illness: find the right medication regimen, make the necessary lifestyle changes, take ownership of your own care, and you’ll be fine. You’ll have good days and bad days, but so do “regular” people. Above all, never feel ashamed, don’t be so hard on yourself, and be patient. This is advice I need to heed more myself.

Anyway, things have continued to go pretty damn well for me! I’m really enjoying my newfound passion for exercise (it’s amazing how much better I feel), my various writing projects (and good lord, there are a lot of them going) are progressing slowly but steadily, I’m doing marketing work and writing ad copy for my dad’s cosmetic procedures business, and taking on some other freelance work here and there on the side. In addition, I definitely want to start some advocacy work in the mental health sphere. I’m really passionate about this issue, and it seems to me that it is ripe for reflection on a national level. There is no reason I shouldn’t be using my writing and speaking talents to help initiate change, and also help comfort and reassure others who are coping with these problems — because the astronomical number of sufferers is downright shocking compared to the small number of people who are open about it. It’s high time for this ridiculous stigma to dissolve so that we can institute some much-needed reforms.

Aaaaaanywho, the real reason for this post is to share a short piece that I just wrote for round 11 of NPR’s 3-Minute fiction contest. I just heard about this series, and it’s pretty effing rad. I believe they give a new prompt every week (though I’m not positive about that), and the prompt for round 11 was “Finder’s Keepers.” They wanted stories wherein a character finds something they have no intention of returning. My submission deals with the issue of what “returning” means in such a case, so it perhaps stretches the prompt a bit, but hopefully in an interesting way. This story was a rather difficult exercise for me, as the contest dictates a 600-word limit and my original draft was 846 words. Thus, I had to cut it down significantly. This was a valuable exercise for me in particular, because I tend to me rather long-winded and repetitive at times. Cutting the piece down forced me to examine which words and phrases packed the most punch and which ones were expendable. Ultimately, I don’t feel like I lost much, if anything, in the editing process.

I hope you enjoy, and as always, thank you so much for reading! Love you all. And Happy Mother’s Day to all, by the way! I love you, Mom!!

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OUR MARTIN

He didn’t have much time left. He slipped in and out now. He couldn’t keep the days straight, and had lost the warm look of recognition when the children came to visit. In a rare moment of clarity, he had grasped my hand and said,

“Bring me my memories.”

It had slipped out of a copy of Great Expectations as I was retrieving the old photo albums for him. The book was one of those intimidating, gilded numbers that sits on the shelf undisturbed for generations — an excellent hiding place.

The letter itself had nearly disintegrated, barely legible underneath coffee stains and smudged cigarette ash, devoured over the years by someone’s greedy eyes and hands. The penmanship was small and deliberate; not a single error in the sea of words; perhaps a fourth, a fifth draft. Someone had worked until they were satisfied.

“June 8th, 1954”

“Dear Martin,”

Oh…

A wave of nausea, an electric jolt. The blood draining from my face.

“I expect this is the last I will write you. I have heard from cousin Kay that you are getting married. I hope the day is just lovely, and I wish you all the happiness you can possibly stand.”

“It is clear to me now that you do not love me, Martin.”

Stop reading, Anne. This ghost doesn’t belong to you.

“I must tell you, Martin, for my own peace of mind, that I love you. I love you with all my heart. St. Louis is just swell, but my heart will forever remain in Joplin with you. I know it’s silly, but I find I cannot even drink iced tea anymore, as the taste brings me back to those times with you under our tree.”

A tree. They had had a tree.

“I love my job as a typist, but with each day that passes, lunching alone, working at my needlepoint (it’s still simply laughable, I’m afraid), it becomes clearer that my life was meant to be a more quiet, solitary affair.”

The words tumbled over each other down the page; a sort of fever dream. I let her feeling wash over me, this woman I had never met, never even heard of…this lonely stowaway sleeping soundly inside a book.

“I don’t want you to feel badly, Martin; not ever. I always knew it would never really be. I didn’t shine like you. I never told you, but I know you only spent time with me because your dear mother asked you to do me the kindness. I know I’m plain, and have always been rather bookish and shy. I haven’t a clue how to style myself, I’m afraid, but I tried. You are the only person who ever made me feel beautiful, Martin.”

I fought the rising lump in my throat.

“I heard your bride is just lovely! Kay said she was a petite little blond. I imagine you are over the moon! You always loved Betty Grable.”

A smile crept across my face, for he had made the comparison many times.

“If I never see you again, Martin, I hope your life is everything you dreamed. I want you to know that the summer we shared is the brightest spot in an otherwise rather dull collection of memories, and it will sustain my heart for a lifetime.”

“Love Always,”
“Margaret.”

And now I was back in the quiet study, the grandfather clock faithfully keeping time in the corner. Steadying myself on the bookcase, I tucked the letter back into its leather-bound coffin and replaced it on the shelf.

Wherever you are, Margaret, I’m sorry.

Yeah I didn’t exactly know what kind of image to put with this post so here is a picture of a smiling kitten.

It’s hard to know what to blog about when everything is going really well. I mean, I guess I’ll just write about how well everything is going…?

It’s been 10 days since I was discharged from the treatment center with a diagnosis and a medication regimen, and every day just gets better and better. The difference continues to astound me. I have remained uniquely me, retained my various oddities, sense of the absurd, and extreme sensitivity, but now I have the benefit of a new sense of balance and clarity. I can stick to a steady routine with ease. I’m kind of addicted to exercise (and no one is more shocked at this than me). I can be creative AND grounded at the same time, without the aid of booze or a personally manufactured crisis. Basically, I can handle my fucking business now. I’m sure it’s beyond annoying for me to go on and on about this, but you have to realize that for me, this is like being a born-again human.

Anyway, I guess I’ll just share what is currently going on in my life for those of you who are interested.

I’m seeing my life coach several times a week, which I still think is hilarious and awesome. I’m getting into the habit of planning out every hour of my day and learning how to manage my time, which is absolutely essential for someone like me. The medication works on a physiological level to level out the internal fluctuations, but I have to meet it halfway by managing my external fluctuations as much as possible. And when both of these aspects are under control, I can finally fire on all cylinders. Routine is absolutely essential for my lifestyle, and up until now, I’ve never been able to maintain one effectively. Again, it’s this consistency of body and mind that I never had access to before.

Right now I’m taking baby steps and adding one new lifestyle component at a time. I’m used to making huge sweeping changes all at once, which makes sense for someone prone to extremes. But this kind of change is slow and steady and (hopefully) more permanent. At this stage, I’m focused primarily on my health and my creative projects, and frankly, just really enjoying being with my family and celebrating this newfound peace. Then in the next couple of weeks, I’ll start volunteering. Then a few weeks after that, I’ll get a part-time job. My life coach (hahaha omg I still can’t get used to saying that), my parents, and myself all agree that I need to take my time with all this as I feel comfortable. Because basically, I’m learning how to live like a fully functioning adult for the first time rather than relying on my upswings to achieve the things I want. It’s a really good feeling.

As far as my creative work, I just started the prewriting process for the split-screen love story I described in a blog post a while back (the one tentatively titled Retrograde). It’s an ambitious project, but it’s going very well so far and moving right along much more quickly than I had anticipated. I have the whole plot outlined in pretty minute detail, and I’ll start the actual drafting process April 1st. The plan is to be halfway finished with the first draft by May, complete it by the beginning of June, and have the final draft submitted to The Black List by the end of June. At the pace I’m going, that timeline is completely doable and I may even finish earlier. But I want to give myself plenty of time because of the level of detail involved with this particular screenplay.

Then, starting in July, I will be developing a children’s book idea I’ve had in the back of my mind for the past year or so that is very much in keeping with my tendency to mess with narrative structures . The concept is a series of books called “Circle Stories.” The books will consist of those sturdy cardboard pages commonly used for children’s books, only they will be affixed around a circular binding (I’m thinking either by magnetic strips on the edge of the pages or some kind of plastic snapping mechanism), such that the book stands up on its own with the pages fanning out around it. However, the pages are all mixed up in no particular order, so that the book is also a puzzle for the child to solve, requiring the reader to arrange the pages in the correct order using context clues. I’m thinking that at least initially, I will do common fairytales in this format, both because children are already familiar with them and because they’re public domain, meaning I could adapt them without having to pay royalties or infringing on any copyrights.

I’m thinking Circle Stories might be a useful and marketable tool for early elementary classrooms because it teaches children how to use context clues and deductive reasoning skills to improve reading comprehension skills, all of which may theoretically help improve scores on state standardized tests. I haven’t decided yet, but I may also write the books in rhyming couplets, which would also help children with phonetics.

Of all my writing projects up to this point, I think this one is the most potentially publishable and lucrative, so I’m really excited about developing it. Children’s books are one of the only types of literature that people actually buy physical copies of anymore. And coincidentally enough, Scholastic, which is perhaps the largest manufacturer of children’s educational literature, is actually headquartered in Cincinnati. And my life coach (still laughing every time I type this) thinks she has some connections there to potentially get me a meeting once I have a prototype made. Obviously, I’ll need to partner up with a local illustrator and draw up some kind of contract before we actually start working together. I have a few people in mind that I’m interested in approaching.

Anyway, I’m giving myself a deadline of January 1, 2014 to have all the content and illustrations done, acquire a patent on the book design, and have a prototype created and ready to present. Even if no one commisions or publishes the series, it will be really valuable for me to learn more about the business end of writing and publishing, and I like the idea of building something really novel from the ground up. I think it’ll also be a lot of fun to do a collaborative project for once.

So at least until the end of this year, I’m focusing primarily on my health and well-being and getting these two writing projects completed and shown. I feel really good about my goals and think they are realistic and attainable. And IF Circle Stories were to sell, I could potentially become a very wealthy woman and sit on a steady stream of royalties that would give me the freedom to write anything I damn well please. But that’s getting way ahead of myself
*Knocks on wood; immediately regrets jinxing self*

And that’s all for now, I guess. Life has been amazing on the other side of all this…if someone had told me six months ago that I would end up back in Ohio doing a stint at a looney bin and living back at home, I would have been extremely upset at this notion. But so far, I can’t really remember a time when I’ve been happier. As one of my best friends said to me when I was first considering leaving LA, “sometimes the story we begin is not the same one we end.”

And the wonderful thing about endings is that they’re always beginnings, too.

For those of you who don’t know, I recently came home to Cincinnati to seek treatment for a mood disorder I’ve been struggling with for quite a while. The stresses of L.A. and the relative isolation I was experiencing there eventually pushed me over a dangerous edge, and I knew that if I didn’t get some kind of help soon, well…you can fill in the blanks. I don’t want to say it again as my poor mother has had to hear it too much already.

Anyway, my last few posts have been about my cross-country drive home, reminiscing and in some ways reliving my past, and preparing to finally let go of it. Not surprisingly, I was exhausted when I got home, but also resigned. Truth be told, I was relieved to have made it and I wanted to waste no time getting into treatment.

My family and I did some research on local mental health facilities, since it was decided that a hospital wasn’t really the right place for me. We found a renowned treatment center very close to us, and I enrolled in their voluntary program for a 10-day diagnostic stay. Strangely, I had hardly any reservations at all about heading off to a looney bin for a mini vacay. I think I had just been suffering for so long that I was willing to try anything.

And I mean, shit, if I could make it through the crazy train that was The Glass House for three months, this was gonna be a cakewalk.

Anyway, I cannot overstate how much better I feel. It really is like night and day. And I made some great friends while there that I’m sure I will continue to be in touch with in the future.

The program was nice in that it wasn’t at all the typical white-walled, sterile, confining atmosphere that you think of when you envision a mental institution. It was much more Promises of Malibu than “Girl, Interrupted.” We had our own private rooms, could keep and use our cell phones, laptops, etc., and could choose whether or not to attend group therapy. Being at a small facility where admission is voluntary is a whole different ballgame from being committed against your will in a crisis situation. You weren’t eligible for the program if you were psychotic, delusional, or out of touch with reality in any other way. So everyone in the unit was suffering from depression, anxiety, mild mood disorder, OCD, substance abuse, or a combination thereof.

While I left the center feeling fantastic, I definitely had my ups and downs while in there. Naturally, I tried out different combinations of medications throughout my stay, and the heavier doses sent me into a serious and exhausting depression for a few days. At that point, I started to lose hope, I think because I felt a lot of pressure to “get better” due to the astronomical expense of the program and all the guilt I had associated with that. But my parents insisted that I not worry about the expense, which made me feel a little better. And in some ways, it was actually very good that I swung as severely as I did during my stay there, because the doctors and counselors got to see just how extreme and transient my moods could be. Ultimately, though, they got my medications straightened out, and I swear to God, I didn’t know it was possible to feel this good without feeling TOO good. I can’t believe I’ve gone my whole life without having this kind of balance. On the one hand, I wish I had done all of this sooner, but on the other, I’m enormously grateful to have done it while I’m still young.

In all fairness, I suppose I should add that the staff, while hospitable and capable, was completely disorganized and dropped the ball on more than a couple of occassions. Apparently they hired a new director several months ago and they were still “working out the kinks.” I had to advocate for my own and others’ care many, many times. But I erred my grievances calmly and cordially, and the staff was for the most part very apologetic, in large part because I genuinely liked all of them and they genuinely liked me. As the saying goes, you kill more flies with honey.

I don’t know why, but I always end up in these situations; leading the charge when incompetent bullshit is afoot. So of course, I became the mouthpiece for all the other pissed off patients and basically prevented what was shaping up to be a mutiny. Once again, Erica was the squeaky wheel, but ultimately, myself and the other patients got the grease.

But I digress.

On day nine, I had a feedback session with my treatment team to discuss my diagnosis. After hours and hours of written testing and sessions with doctors, I sat down with them all (with my mother on speaker phone of course) to get the results. This part I was a little nervous about. Ironically, I came in there afraid they would tell me I’m crazy, but by the end of it, I was afraid they would tell me I wasn’t. Because if nothing was wrong with my mind, what the hell was wrong with ME? And how would I fix it?

Luckily, this wasn’t the case, and I am, in fact, crazier than a bag of angel dust. No, I’m only kidding, turns out I’m not that nuts. My established diagnosis of ADD was confirmed (no shocker there), and I was given additional diagnoses of alcohol abuse (even less of a shocker there), and rapid-cycling Bipolar II (pretty much in the ballpark of what I anticipated). Bipolar II is a form of bipolar disorder with a predominant depressive mood coupled with periods of hypomania, which refers to an elevated mood and energy level distinguishible from actual mania, which includes psychotic delusions, paranoia, etc. Cyclothymia is extremely similar to Bipolar II, but I was diagnosed with the latter because of how rapidly my moods cycle, which is apparently not typical in cyclothymia. The treatment team believed (and I agreed) that my alcohol use was an effort to self-medicate which had actually been causing more severe mood symptoms. They also agreed (and this really surprised me) that in the absence of alcohol use, my hypomanic episodes weren’t actually doing me much harm aside from the sleeplessness, though that symptom was not to be minimized. In accordance with the diagnosis, it was recommended that I stop drinking, get heavily involved in therapy, and take my medications as scheduled. They believed my prognosis for recovery and/or remission was very good, and when I left that meeting, I did, too.

Also, the IQ testing they did on me put me in the very highest intelligence bracket for verbal skills and knowledge (top 2% of the population). This has nothing to do with my diagnosis at all. I’m just blatantly bragging about it.

So I left feeling like they hit the nail on the head with the diagnosis, and feeling very good about my medication regimen. And let me tell you, folks…it’s quite a regimen.

My New Friends!!

But it WORKS. Enormously well. And the cocktail that we settled on is very low doses of more medications, rather than higher doses of one or two. This is great because I can achieve the mood stabilization I need with no undesirable effects on my personality and no side effects at all so far (well, except for a slight decrease in appetite, but who the hell complains about that?!). Thankfully, the psychiatrist agreed that the actual mood stabilizers were going to be too heavy-duty and possibly exacerbate the depressive symptoms, so we stuck with low-dose anti-seizure medicines (which makes me wonder even more about the possible link with my childhood epilepsy) and low-dose antidepressants. The effect has basically been getting rid of all the bad mood while retaining all the good mood — CONSISTENTLY. I had no idea that was possible. I went into this assuming that I was going to have to give up something to get something; that I would lose my spark or my wit or my sense of humor along with my depressive spells. It’s really impossible to explain how shocked and thrilled I am with the outcome of all this. I know people in this situation are always “cautiously optimistic,” but personally, I think cautious optimism is self-fulfilling, self-defeating, and pointless. Why put a condom on your own hope?! What, so that if things go wrong later on, you can say “I told myself so?” I don’t get that. I’m enjoying feeling great, right now, right in this moment, and allowing myself to believe that will continue, because I don’t see the advantage in believing otherwise.

I’ve spent the majority of my life waiting for and assuming that the other shoe will drop, and I don’t want to live that way anymore. Maybe now I don’t have to.

In addition to my meds, I’ve stopped drinking entirely and attend Women for Sobriety meetings. I went off-site to a couple of AA meetings while I was staying at the treatment center, but it just didn’t jive with me. It was kind of church-y and depressing…they make you feel horrible about your past use, but then give all the credit to Jesus if you quit. And it just felt like a bunch of grizzled old dudes trying to one-up each other’s horror stories from their boozed-up past. “I lived in a conversion van and woke up in my own vomit for two weeks straight…” “Oh yeah? I lived under a bridge selling oregano in plastic bags for a year until I got stabbed in the knee by a guy named Dutch!” Don’t get me wrong, I think AA is a fantastic organization that has helped millions of people, it was just a little too guilt-driven and mired in the past for my liking. Women for Sobriety is a much better fit. We’re more open with each other, we don’t continually refer to ourselves as alcoholics, and we focus on our present circumstances and on building each other up. It’s great stuff. Plus, we laugh our asses off in there. AA is so goddamn serious all the time.

Since I got out of the treatment center, I went on a date and celebrated St. Patty’s Day without a single drink, and I had an awesome time (at St. Patty’s, at least). I wasn’t so much surprised at my willpower as how minimal the temptation actually was. When I take my medicine, I feel good. I feel calm and happy. That urgent need to get some booze down my gullet so that I can feel normal just isn’t really there anymore. And if I can soberly survive St. Patty’s and what turned out to be a pretty boring date, I feel like that is a damn good sign. Besides, if I had been drunk on my date, who knows how long it would have taken to figure out that the guy was boring?! It could have taken me weeks! And how many dudes have I dated waaay longer than I should have because booze made them seem interesting?! I don’t even want to think about it.

So I can’t have booze. It’s pretty simple, really: diabetics shouldn’t eat funnel cakes and bipolar people shouldn’t shoot Jack. Makes sense, no? And I won’t miss it as much as people probably assume. I don’t need it for the reasons I used to anymore. And how much of my life have I wasted being either hammered, hungover, or regretful? Good riddance. I’m plenty fun enough without it.

I’m also working out six days a week and just fuckin loving it. I used to dread it, or never be in the mood, or do anything to avoid it, but whatever switch got turned on in my brain is now releasing endorphins the way it’s supposed to. While at crazy camp (a term I fondly coined for the treatment center), I got pretty into lifting. I do the obligatory 20 minutes of cardio to get my heart rate up, but spend the rest of my workout with weights. That burn gets addictive, and I put on muscle really fast, so the instant gratification seeker in me likes to see the results. I don’t really give a shit about losing weight; if that happens, it happens. I just want to be stronger and feel better. Basically, I’m gonna be an absolute manimal. A beast. Just ripped, bro. Cut. Crushing my fuckin delts and lats on the daily.

But I digress.

Anyway, I like exercise now.

And I also have a life coach now. That’s right, a life coach. I could not be more thrilled about this development. Having a life coach in Cincinnati Ohio is basically the same as being a Kardashian. I am telling everyone within a 13-mile radius about my life coach with the oblivious, unapologetic zeal of an obnoxious Californian who has just cut out gluten. It makes me feel fancy and special as shit. When she (my life coach, Melissa McCarthy, why yes, I do have her card if you would like it) calls me, I loudly announce to anyone within earshot that “I HAVE TO TAKE THIS BECAUSE IT IS MY LIFE COACH AND I AM VERY IMPORTANT YOU SEE.” It might get old to them, but it doesn’t get old to me. Also, everyone I know wants a life coach now. Who wouldn’t, right?! This nice lady is coaching the shit out of my life! I have every hour of every day planned out! I get stuff done! Like a normal human person! I have short term goals! I have long term goals! I have tracking mechanisms! I HAVE A FUCKING DREAM BOARD, PEOPLE! Anyway. If there’s one thing you take away from this post, and frankly that would be surprising,

Get. Yourself. A life. Coach. I’m talking to you, Alex Stein.

But in all seriousness, I really can’t believe it. I’m absolutely floored. My parents are floored. Everyone is floored. I have never felt like this in my life, and I never in a million years thought I would get the right cocktail of medicines right out of the gate. Nobody does. You hear horror stories about how long it takes to get the right combination, and the hell you enure in the process. But I might have just gotten lucky, and I’m not wasting time looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Earlier today, I was driving along and Dave Grohl’s voice came on the radio singing “it’s times like these/ you learn to live again,” and it just hit me all of a sudden; how quiet my mind finally was, how good I felt, how normal and capable and steady, and what a true miracle that is for me…and I’ll admit it, I just started crying. I actually had to pull the car over into a parking lot, lay my head on the steering wheel for a moment, and just cry.

It’s like getting a whole new life.

I go to sleep at midnight because I’m tired. I wake up on my own at eight or nine because I’m rested. I have actual energy, throughout the entire day. I laugh my ass off with my family. I laugh my ass off with my friends. My brain isn’t consumed with depressing thoughts about the past or manic fits about the future. I get to live in the present, consistently, for the first time in my life. And when I’m living in the now, I don’t put my purse in the sink. I don’t leave trash in my car. I don’t stuff unpaid parking tickets under a floormat. My mind is here, with me, in this moment, and I can use it to manipulate my environment. It sounds like a simple thing, but that’s because most people take it for granted.

And it’s hard to explain to people who have never had a brain like mine, but that never stops me from trying. It’s like the weather in your brain is constantly changing and you spend your entire life continually trying to survive the storms and clean up all the debris after they’ve passed through. It’s not the normal stress of life; it’s not some external event that triggers a natural emotional response; it is a brain that is firing off erratically almost all the time. It is as real an illness as it gets, and what really sucks is that, because people can’t see it, they assume it’s character weakness. It’s “just a phase.” She’s being “dramatic.” Or the ever popular “that chick is crazy!!” Interesting how the hordes of men (and women, but come on, it’s mostly men) throwing this judgment around never actually stop and express genuine concern for the girls they’re saying this about. I mean, if someone you knew started having an asthma attack, you wouldn’t just sit there laughing at them. You’d go get help. So why do we so often sit back and do nothing while a friend continually gets black out drunk, makes self-destructive decisions, and hides out alone for days at a time?

Why do we just laugh it off? “She’s crazy,” we utter dismissively, just glad it’s not us.

And I guess I just wish we, as a society, could be a little kinder about all of this. A little more tolerant and aware of these issues, their astounding prevalence, and the real pain they’re causing for the people afflicted with them. I can tell you first hand, it’s exhausting. I’ve walked around for years not even knowing I was sick, trying to live a normal life for both Jekyll AND Hyde. And it’s perhaps worth noting that, in that story, Hyde eventually wins out. And that almost happened to me. Hyde almost won.

But he didn’t. Thank God he didn’t.

And some people have come to me saying things like “but you never seemed that bad,” or “I never thought you were CRAZY crazy, just eccentric!” or “you know, you really shouldn’t let them drug you up like that at the expense of your uniqueness…” And while I know people mean well, that stuff is really frustrating. Of course nobody knew how bad it was — I hid out for days and weeks during my depressive spells, doing the bare minimum on the internet to make everyone think things were fine. Avoiding phone calls. Lying about being okay when I did take phone calls. I didn’t want anyone to see me like that, and for the most part, they didn’t. They saw the busty blonde comic who was always the life of the party. They saw my academic achievements, my television appearance, all my highest highs…and the thing is, there were many of them, which only obscured the fact that I was sick. Nobody realized that even when I was “succeeding,” I was either really unbalanced or not enjoying my successes. And how could I, when nothing ever lasted? After all, you can’t build anything on a continually shifting foundation. It’s like trying to build a house on top of a damn fault line. You can try as many times as you like to lay some bricks, but it’s only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down again. And after enough earthquakes, you just throw your hands in the air and say “fuck it!”

But I swear, these medications are giving me a new lease on life. I can’t even remember the last time I got normal sleep for more than two straight nights. I can’t even begin to explain what it feels like to experience balance when you never had it before. It’s almost like getting a whole new sense, but it’s authentic, not manic. It’s real. I can build something on top of this. I can build whatever I WANT on top of this. And all the pain I’ve experienced in my life has given me the insight I need to affect and empathize with people. It all had a point and a purpose, but it sure as hell feels like the worst is over. Feels like coming up for air. Feels like so many stupid, cliched, wonderful things that I could spend an hour writing them all out, but I won’t. Because it’s simple.

I’m happy.

I’m really, really, really happy.

Since my early 20′s, my father has often lovingly referred to me as “The Prodigal Daughter.”

“Go and explore,” he would say, “but know that you can always come back home.”

This used to make me strangely angry; like he always assumed that I would surely fail in whatever new endeavor I was chasing and have to come back home to the nest to roost.

As I get older though, and especially now, I’m very grateful for this enormous luxury.

I’ve been on the road for over a week now. I got held up for a few extra days in Denver due to weather, which was not a shocker, but anyway, for much of that time, it has been myself and the highway. Needless to say, this is a lot of time to be living in your own head. Part of it has resulted in crippling anxiety and fear, definitely. But much of that time has also been a transformative trip down memory lane. I am, after all, literally and geographically retracing much of my twenties: from LA, to Denver, to St. Louis (where I lived for three years after college when I was engaged), and finally home to Cincinnati. The I-70 version of “Erica Russell, This Is Your Life,” so to speak. Not surprisingly, it has provided plenty of food for nostalgia, reflection, and catharsis.

In tarot, there is a card called “The Fool.” I hate tattoos, because hey, your own skin is usually prettier and less permanent, but if ever I were to get one, it would be The Fool. I suppose this harkens back to my love of symbolic, esoteric languages that I discussed in my last post. They always seem to inspire me in interesting ways. Anyway, The Fool shows up a lot inside veiled pop culture references, films, and really all over the place if you’re paying attention (including The Simpsons, of course). The card represents a particularly salient concept for many coming-of-age artists, so it makes perfect sense that it gets injected into all kinds of artistic product.

To anyone without context for tarot lore, “The Fool” might at first sound like a bad card to draw. In modern culture, we think of a fool as a hapless idiot; easily misled; a naive simpleton. And while this definition certainly informs the tarot interpretation, The Fool in tarot is in fact the hero, the protagonist, the heart and soul of the tarot story. Per tarot lore, The Fool is the open-minded yet sheltered young man who embarks, alone, on an epic journey in search of wisdom and experience. He is the innocent Odysseus of the tarot, only The Fool has no aim but his own edification. Rather, The Fool has an inherent sense that one day he will rule over and be responsible for his own dominion, and he knows that he must gain wisdom which he does not yet have to be of use to his world. Knowing only that he does not know, The Fool undertakes the long journey ahead with zeal and youthful optimism, weighed down with nothing save a pitifully small rucksack that carries only the essentials. He is followed only by the faithful dog who nips at his heels in constant warning of the dangers that await, not least of which is the cliff whose edge stands directly in front of him. But The Fool is blind to danger, gazing heavenward toward his source of divine guidance and inspiration, completely faithful in its providence, wholly undeterred.

Christ, I should just call it a day and be a college professor.

Anyway, despite these clear dangers, The Fool is not a cautionary tale if drawn upright; rather, he is a signal to shore up your courage in the face of the unknown and simply go, go, go. Again, he is the protagonist of the tarot, the very lens through which the story is told. During the course of his travels, The Fool encounters every other character in the tarot, learning something invaluable from each and every one of them as he goes, taking the bad with the good, all the while becoming wiser and more valuable himself. At the end of his journey, The Fool returns home, ready to rule over himself and his kingdom.

What a cool fucking story, right?! I actually think the tarot could be adapted into a very cool children’s book; the structure itself would make a perfect episodic bedtime series that could be a really beautiful introduction to the abstract concepts of human nature.

I mean it might not hit so big with Middle America, but I feel like gay NYU professors living in Brooklyn brownstones would pay about $400 a pop for a hard-cover illustrated version to read to their kids. Not that it’s about money.

But I digress.

Anyway, on my current cross-country journey home and indeed back through my own past, I can’t help but compare myself to The Fool. Right after I dropped out of law school and had not the faintest clue what the fuck I was doing with my life or where I was going, I had my cards done for the first time with a friend of mine, totally on a whim. Not shockingly, the first card in my spread was The Fool. I was told I was going to be embarking on a long journey that would leave me forever changed.

And thinking back on the last couple of years, yeah, I would say that’s pretty damn accurate.

But again, my interest in esoteric stories, symbols, etc., isn’t really in their actual predictive or applicable value. I like them simply because they supply me with new frameworks with which to interpret my experiences in meaningful ways. And so in thinking about the concept of The Fool, I wasn’t thinking about how my life experiences since that particular reading have held “true,” but more about how The Fool’s journey has applied throughout my 20′s in general and as a concept; where I have been, what characters have influenced me, and what I’ve learned.

And whatever you want to call it; The Fool, The Prodigal Daughter, the Penny Lane, the goddamn gypsy, I’ve certainly seen a lot of the world. And this drive has been the first time in a while that I’ve had cause and opportunity to stop and really process it all. I mean, Jesus Christ on a cracker, I’m basically the female Forrest Gump.

And so, dear readers, without further ado and in no particular order, I Erica Vandemark Russell give you an honest and exhaustive list of the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Fool’s journey of my twenties. Why? Because I can. Because I have worked to have these experiences, and paid for them in kind. Because this is my bizarre life, and I am proud of it. Because I am a writer and these are my stories.

Sorry in advance, Mom and Dad, though at this point I doubt any of it comes as a surprise:

…ahem…

I have said “yes” to a man with a diamond ring on Christmas Eve. I have held the cold hand of my darling aunt as she lay dying in bed. I have been asked to stand up and be recognized in Ohio Stadium as one of the top 10 graduating GPAs in my undergraduate class. I have spent an entire summer on network television. I have let a coked-up Andy Dick grab my left breast at The Hollywood Improv and mutter simply “those things could start and end a war.” I have kissed a man I desperately loved at the top of a Colorado mountain at midnight on a full moon in a snowstorm. I have botched a trade on the New York Stock Exchange and lost 1.7 million dollars that weren’t mine for roughly 10 minutes until I somehow bought it back at a profit. I have been a size 10. I have said “no” to a man with a drinking problem after I said “yes” to him the previous Christmas Eve. I have taught summer school English to 11th grade students in South Central LA. I have performed a stand-up set at The Comedy Store in Hollywood. I have gone to a clothing-optional dance at Sarah Lawrence College (don’t worry Mom and Dad, I only went Britney Spears sexy schoolgirl). I have sipped champagne on the arm of my artist boyfriend during his opening at the New York Gallery building. I have lived with him in his parents’ basement after that. I have dressed up in a platinum blonde wig and a Playboy cop’s uniform to sell Jello shots for five bucks a pop plus tips at a piano bar. I have sat in the passenger’s seat of a Maserati next to an (again) coked-up real estate tycoon who owned 1/5th of the real estate in Midtown as he drove exclusively on the sidewalk to “avoid traffic.” I have slept on an air mattress for 10 months. I have talked on the phone for hours with sobbing, wrongfully convicted inmates I was trying to get out of jail as a law school student fellow. I have sobbed to my father as a rightfully convicted DUI offender as a law school student fuck-up. I have been an honorary guest at the table of the entire writing staff of “Community” after wooing one of the writers at a fancy bar in Santa Monica, which I went to by myself for no particular reason. I have gotten rejected by a man on national television. I have been told that I had a “spare tire around my stomach” after wearing a bikini on national television. I have done a lot of things on national television. I have had a Spanish financier named Diego feed me asparagus spears on a boat and tell me I “leave no man unchanged.” I have grabbed the cold hand of a recently-divorced 66 year-old German bartender to make him tango with me on the beach in Barcelona after he said he thought his life was over. I have held the hand of a 67 year-old Native American woman across the bar I worked at until the day she didn’t come in because the sauce had finally killed her. I have worked as an ad copywriter for a British male pornstar selling sex tip videos for men. I have shrugged helplessly at my first love after he asked me whether I was in love with someone else and we both collapsed onto my living room floor in sobs. I have sobbed on the same living room floor with the same man a year prior when we both had to make the horrible decision that we were not ready to be parents. I have made my own way from Southern Italy to North London by five different trains with three suitcases in the course of a single day. I have spent weeks in bed wishing to die. I have quit smoking. I have started smoking again. I have been really blonde. I have been not as blonde. I have watched my brother become a wonderful husband and an even better father. I have desperately wanted to be the mother of my ex-fiance’s seven year-old little girl who already had one. I have been roofied. I have written a sitcom pilot. I have cried on an English soccer player’s shoulder as he dropped me off at Heathrow and called me “love” for the last time. I have been a size 4. I have spent Super Bowl Sunday on Venice Beach playing cornhole. I have spent Christmas alone eating street tacos and watching Swingers.

I have learned about pain. I have learned about love. I have learned how to be invincible, and then learned how to be vulnerable again. I have learned how to be an enigma, and then learned how to be a trusted confidante again. I have learned how to be an adult, and then learned that being a child is, in most cases, wiser.

Most of all, I have learned about people, and decided to see only their goodness. I have learned about myself, and fight every day to see only the goodness there, too.

I have been, above all else and throughout, a perfect fool. Or Margot Tenenbaum.

And as I think about it all on this return trip home, I feel lucky as hell to have lived all of this; good and bad, taxing and fortifying, magical and traumatic. I have said yes when I should have said no, and “no?” when I should have said “never.” And I suppose what I learned is that “should” is something you shouldn’t do when you’re young.

Anyhow, I have no regrets. Well, okay, a few, but just enough to have assured me that the stove is, indeed, hot. Which I have truly, finally, completely learned for myself.

And I guess all of this is coming up in accumulation now because of this heartbreaking yet relieving sense that this is the end of an era for me. The close of a chapter. Hell, maybe the start of a whole new book. I don’t mean that I am going to stop dreaming big or going for what I want or stay in Ohio forever; who knows what the future holds. I put no restrictions or watermarks on any of it; it is, after all, the future, and I am now wise enough to know not to feign any dominion over it. I just mean that my days of accumulating experience for experience’s sake seem to be at an end. My soul is satisfied, but naturally weary, and I find myself smiling and counting my life’s novel episodes the way a sleepy, glassy-eyed child counts Halloween candy at the end of the night. My work here is done, and I have done good.

And I have lived in choas for so long that normalcy seems like the next great adventure. My body is tired and my mind is reeling. Experience comes at a cost, and life itself can be a war. I’m ready to come home and heal. I’m ready to start experiencing the simple things, as a dear friend advised me to start doing at this stage in my life. My parents aren’t getting any younger, and my nephew won’t be this cute forever (okay, maybe he will). What my heart wants is just to go home, give my physical body everything it wants for a while, hold my baby nephew until he falls asleep in my lap, talk about life with my father, talk about love with my mother, take the boat out on the river and have a couple beers (only a couple:) over the summer, write a little every day, figure out what the hell is next, start a family of my own, and get healthy enough to use my gifts to help a lot of people. Boom. That’s a good recipe for a happy death. Which I hope doesn’t come anytime soon.

Anyway, I’m taking a break from everything for a bit. I’m going into treatment when I get home, because I’m crazy or whatever, which I’m sure I am, but I’d prefer to stay that way as long as they can help me be happy. My crazy is pretty fucking special, folks. The world needs it. But not at the expense of my own happiness, and since I have accumulated more than enough experience for about fifteen lifetime; it’s time for me to just be happy.

Strangely enough, in the reading that I referred to above, the one where I drew The Fool in the present position, I drew the Four of Swords in the future position. Now that I think of it, it’s odd that I even remember this. It was a year-and-a-half ago. Anyway, the Four of Swords depicts a knight in armor, resting peacefully inside a tomb. He lies in immaculate repose, dead or asleep, as his body heals from battle. This is the card of convalescence, of tending to the physical body before the spirit can go forth and conquer again. And that seems pretty on point to me, too.

Because it’s a crazy world out there, folks; even moreso if you’re crazy. A fool like me can burn out quickly, and it’s taken me a surprisingly long time, but I am burnt out. I am ash. But from that ash rises the Phoenix, and I have this powerful sense that that is exactly what is about to happen with me. I will take this time and come back a million times more powerful and capable and joyful. I am completely open to transformation, whatever that may look like for me. Healing my body has been my inclination for some time now, but I’ve tried to load way too many responsibilities and undertakings on top of it. I’ve tried to do it alone. This is my time to concentrate on taking care of me, with my support system all around me, learn what makes me happy, lick my wounds, and learn how Erica is going to live and what that is going to look like from here on out.

I think I might just figure out a new way to be a happy artist (gasp). And frankly, I’m excited. This might sound shitty or arrogant, which is not at all my intention, but in thinking about the next stage of my development, I am left wondering: when I have my body and moods regulated, what WON’T I be able to do?

Besides, have you ever heard anyone say they were grateful to have been an early bloomer?

Anyway, I love you all, and I’ll be back with more stories, I’m sure. Especially after what’s coming. As always, I am honored to be your Fool. Go out and be one yourselves if you haven’t and can afford to. Trust me, there is much to be learned.

And to my father: the prodigal daughter returns once more.

And to my father, who wrote me yesterday to tell me that, no matter what “poor wretch I see in my own mind at the moment,” when he closes his eyes to picture me, what he sees is “a smart, pretty girl laughing.”

Thank you.

Well, today I went and got my car serviced, packed my suitcases up, and prepared to start my cross-country drive on the morrow. But alas, Winter Storm Q appears to be cock-blocking me hardcore, and it seems I’ll need to delay my departure one or two days unless I want to get caught in a hardcore mountain shitstorm.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I can’t stand delays. When I have a mind to do something, I tend to want to do it right away. In general, I operate my daily life with about as much patience as a Jewish mother of five on Black Friday. It’s a problem. I’m working on it.

Anyway, because I’m a crazy person, it occurred to me that Mercury is about to go retrograde. And those of you who know that I have no patience also probably know that astrology is a hobby of mine. I started studying it a couple of summers ago when I had too much time on my hands. I think I was drawn to it because I have a thing for symbolic languages in general. For example, math was always the subject I struggled with most in high school (shocker), but when I got to college and took symbolic logic (the study of reducing verbal sentences into equations of symbols), I got the highest grade in my class. My brain seems to work better when I start with abstractions and generalities and work backward to conclusions.

I myself don’t really know if I believe there is any actual legitimacy to astrology. On the one hand, it is one of the most ancient “religions,” and it does make some sense to me that the arrangement of the universe when you enter it has some bearing on why you’re there in the first place. On the other hand, it’s a bunch of wacky animal symbols with absolutely no basis whatsoever in science. Although plenty of scientists through the ages have dabbled in it and been hesitant to discount it entirely. Einstein (another fan of symbolic languages) is said to have been among them. Though people also say Einstein was schizotypal…and was so spacey he would get in the shower with his shoes still on.

….Which is completely something I would do.

Whatever the case, I like astrology because I see it as a valuable practice in self-assessment. To me, whether there is any actual truth to it, the very exercise of comparing what the stars say about you with what you feel about yourself is a worthwhile endeavor. Modern Western society does not value internal, personal reflection as much as other societies around the world, and I think that’s a shame. We are so busy doing all the time that we hardly ever stop and say “okay, wait a second; who am I and what is my purpose in life?” So I suppose my point is that at the very least, astrology supplies a framework for delving into these questions on a very personalized level. To me, it doesn’t really matter whether or not it’s “real” if it prompts a person to ask themselves the important macro questions.

Also, it’s just a totally fun, ridiculous thing to know about.

Anyway, I’m actually (and rather secretly) a pseudo-expert in this crap. If a person gives me their birth time and date, I can read entire natal charts with impressive accuracy (personality traits, early family life, traumatic experiences, what sort of person they’ll marry and when, career direction; all that shit). Roll your eyes all you want, but when people find this out at parties, the eye rollers are always the ones who nevertheless saddle up next to me on the couch and ask for a reading Why? Because people are interested in themselves, and because deep down, even the most hardened cynic secretly wants to believe there is an order to things. It’s valuable to have a skill that caters to those human desires. And anyway, does it make any less sense than believing some guy who turned water into wine was the son of God and now controls all the shit in your life? Sorry Christians; I still love and respect you. Just saying.

But I digress.

Anyway, Mercury is about to go retrograde from Feb. 23rd – March 17th. Even people who don’t dabble in the astrological “sciences” have often heard of this infamous phenomenon. Mercury retrograde occurs three times per year for roughly a month each time. It refers to periods throughout the year in which the planet Mercury appears to be moving backward in the night sky. Of course, it does not actually move backward, it only appears to from our vantage point on earth. During Mercury retrograde, anything having to do with communications, electronic devices, travel plans, and contracts tends to go fucking haywire. Laugh at me now, but watch what happens. It totally blows. Computers crash, flights get delayed, phones stop working, miscommunications abound (“I didn’t get your email,” “UPS lost the package,” “I want out of my contract”).

And travel plans always experience some kind of hiccup.

So I sort of expected that something would screw up my original itinerary for a trip planned for Mercury retrograde. And it’s really no big a deal; in fact it led to a huge breakthrough for me in my work in a totally roundabout way.

One of the things I really like about astrology is that all transits, retrogrades, what have you, exist as potential energy, rather than as fixed, fated circumstances. Like everything in life, it is what you make of it. Even with a generally pain-in-the-ass situation like Mercury retrograde, there are positive ways to channel that energy. The retrograde is a good time to go back and edit things. During Mercury retrograde, we’re encouraged to take a Mulligan on shit; go back to a previously abandoned project, rehash an important conversation that went wrong, take a new position with a former employer, renegotiate an important contract. Those are all positive uses of the prevailing reverse energy in communications.

So naturally, as I have a couple more days of sitting on my ass twiddling my thumbs before I can blow this popsicle stand, I started thinking about how I could use the retrograde in some productive way with my work. As I stated in my last post, I’ve been trying desperately to settle on a new writing project for when I get home, but nothing really felt right. There were plenty of projects I had previously conceived of that I considered going back to, but none of them were quite “it.” The main problem was that there were a few different options and I sort of wanted to blend them all, but didn’t really know how.

Then, boom, it came to me in a dream last night like a bolt of lightning. I get a lot of inspiration from my dreams. Sometimes they feel quite a bit more real than my waking life.

Anyway, the details were hazy, but in the dream, I was at my desk drafting a script, only for some reason I was working on two different laptops at the same time. When I woke up, I couldn’t remember exactly what I had been writing, but I knew it was a love story, which seemed a little unexpected for me, but surprisingly right once I thought about it.

I woke up from this and I literally bolted upright from bed when it hit me. Somewhere in my brain, I solved a problem I’ve been working out in my head for months, and now I know exactly how to move ahead. I know it sounds pretentious and melodramatic, but as an artist, when something like that hits you, it gives you that heart-in-your-throat-love-at-first-sight-across-a-crowded-room feeling. It’s exactly like being giddy over a new love interest; it’s almost impossible to think about anything else for a little while. It’s the best romantic void-filler there is; better than Hagen Daaz or Ryan Reynolds movies or sassy brunches with the girls. You don’t miss romance when you’re into a project. Honestly, I don’t even miss sex when I’m really into a project, and I think we’re all aware of my, ahem, healthy libido.

But I should get to the point. For about a year now, I’ve been wanting to write a full split-screen film or a novel that diverged in time from the middle of the book** (apparently, yes, I am including footnotes in my blog now). This is a motif that I seem to keep coming back to and playing around with in various formats: inverted or non-linear narrative structures. I like to mix up beginnings and endings, mess with time, order of events, etc. Why?

Because my own brain works in retrograde.

What I mean is, I’m clearly right-brain dominant. As I’ve said before, my intelligence is almost all intuitive; I’m a dot connector. I think in associations and connections rather than step-by-step processes. This is the reason I like symbolic languages, abstractions, analogies, jokes; I enjoy the challenge of finding a common thread between two seemingly disparate things. It affirms my internal sense that everything is actually part of one big whole; that division is just an illusion we experience so we get to feel the joy of unity on the rare occassions we experience it.

And in my writing, this sort of naturally manifests as a preoccupation with connecting parallel storylines. And examining the ways in which the past informs the future, and vice versa. Because yes, the future does influence the past, or at least our understanding of it. How many times in life does something happen that makes you think back to a memory and attribute a special significance to it? All the fucking time. We all do this, whether we admit it or not. Someone enters our life, or we land the perfect job, or we move to a distant city, and we think back to all the events that came before and think “so THAT’s why that happened.” And what this really points back to is this internal desire to believe that there is a rhyme and reason, some kind of order, to our lives. That even if God is indeed a “watchmaker,” as posited by Dawkins and the like, at least he is checking his wrist every so often to make sure things are ticking along.

…and no, I don’t smoke weed. What goes on in my head on the reg is already too much.

Anyway, these are big ideas, but they form the basis of my entire aesthetic as a writer. The boiling down process is tricky, and the question is: how can I diffuse these big ideas into something simple, accessible, human, relatable? Because personally, I believe 2 things about art: 1) If you’re not doing something new, you’re better off doing nothing. And 2) The true test of whether you’re doing it right is whether an uneducated drunk in a small-town bar likes it. All good art is, is truth. All it takes to be a good artist is complete, fearless honesty. If you’re totally honest, everyone gets it. Everyone.

So these are my two aims when I write something with the aim of production. And until I had this dream, I had been struggling with how to fit all this into the right niche. Because I wanted to move from “fearless and personal” to “fearless and universal” on my next project, which I think is a natural evolution.

And right now, I want to write a love story. My heart wants to. Not a canned, predictable, charming rom com, but a painfully real, down-to-earth love story. About real, imperfect people.

And I’m doing almost all of it in split-screen, moving backward in time. It’s ambitious, yes, but it’s in me to write.

This is going to take a whole fuck ton of pre-writing and microscopic structural planning. But here’s what I’m envisioning:

(Finally getting to the point) —->

The opening scene (in a normal, unified screen) is a busy city street corner. A man and a woman walk toward one another, then accidentally bump into each other on the corner. There is a moment of stunned recognition, after which one sentence is uttered by one of them, but we have no context for it yet and the meaning is unclear. Then, from that moment on, the screen splits vertically and our man and woman are in rewind, walking backward down the city street and backward into their own stories. From the point where the screen divides, their individual stories are told next to each other, in split screen, simultaneously backward in time.

When I say “backward in time,” I mean in past episodes that nevertheless move forward in time in the individual scenes themselves (e.g., dual scenes from January 2005. then dual scenes from October 2004, etc). Trying to do it all backwards would be totally incomprehensible and stupid.

Literally every scene will relate to the one next to it; their individual narratives in constant conversation with one another. They are living parallel stories in different circumstances, in different lives, in different ways, but the themes and the symbols are always mirrored in some way if you look closely enough. For the most part, dialogue will be taking place only in one of their stories at one time. simply in the interest of audience comprehension. But ideally, I want to have at last a few scenes where dialogue is going on in both scenes at once, and it is interrelated. By this I mean, our female lead is having a conversation with her friend on one side, and our male lead is having a conversation with his friend on the other at the same time. If I can pull this off, the conversation(s) can be construed as either two separate conversations between two people, or as one large conversation between four people. I love leaving that open to multiple interpretations and different levels of understanding.

Anyway, we go back in time with our characters for the majority of the film without knowing the backstory between the two of them until the end. They change jobs, they move to different cities, other love interests enter an exit, and all of it makes sense when we get to the end of the film, which of course was the chronological beginning for them. Only when they meet in the past (again, at the end of the film, because we’re moving backward in time) does the screen become unified once again. The last line of the film will be the line that gives context and meaning to the first. Remembering what was said when they run into each other at the beginning, the audience will know how their story ends based on the context given in the last line of the screenplay, at the beginning of their relationship.

I know it’s hard to wrap your head around, but I really believe I can make this work very well in order to tell a love story in a brand new way. Because when you tell an old story in a new way, it hits your audience harder, has a much greater emotional impact. I think the service artists provide to the world is refreshing things; taking stories we think we already know and making them new again. Transforming hardened adults into children for a moment by taking something familiar and making it new again.

Anyway, I love the idea of this project, but the unconventional format has raised difficult practical problems. I draft scripts in a software called Final Draft (the industry standard for submissions; and that shit is not cheap, it cost me $250 when I first moved out here). Anyway, Final Draft has a “dual dialogue” option for when characters are meant to talk over one another, but no option that would fully accomodate a project like this. I could do it in Microsoft Word if I did it in landscape format, but it would take forever to format it myself as a screenplay, and even then, it still wouldn’t look professional.

BUT, if I worked on two laptops simultaneously in Final Draft, like I was doing in my dream, it would work. I could write both scripts (because I’ll need one for the female lead’s story and another for the male’s) in direct correlation with one another, moment to moment, shot to shot, with the level of specificity that I want.

Anyway, the working title I have for it is “Retrograde,” because of course, that’s exactly what the story is doing, and what inspired it in the first place. So yeah, that is the long, drawn out, rambling story of how my silly interest in astrology and abstract connections inspired my next project. Which is crazy. The whole thing is crazy, I know that. But lots of people who do new things are considered crazy until they’re successful at it.

The level of detail on this is of course going to be painstaking, and this is a project that will no doubt take a few months rather than a few weeks. That’s okay with me, as I’ll almost certainly have that long. Once it’s complete, I’m going to register it with the WGA and upload it to something called “The Black List,” which is a website created several years ago for producers wanting to cast a wider net for talented screenwriters that are either unrepresented or living in “the flyover states.” The Black List has produced some serious successes, even Oscar winners, in recent years. Actually, Diablo Cody, who is one of my favorite screenwriters, got her start through the Black List when she submitted the screenplau for Juno. Anyway, there are tons of writers out there and I’m very realistic about my odds, but the nice thing about the Black List is that it’s very reputable and is also a relative meritocracy. If you upload and pay $50, you’re guaranteed a professional reader who will give you notes. You know your stuff is getting seen. Your challenge is to make it so good and so stand-out that it can’t be ignored.

All of this is probably interesting to no one but me, but that’s never stopped me from writing a blog post about anything before.

But I’m excited, because this idea is the product of months and months of turning various ideas over in my mind, and now I’ve arrived at an answer. If I’m not too exhausted, I’ll probably start the prewriting process in my hotel rooms on the road, but when I get home, my first priority has to be my health and levelling out. And being with my family will help me with that, because if I were out here on my own, alone in my apartment, I would almost certainly fixate on this script, stop sleeping, and swing myself into a mania trying to get it all out. The falling in love analogy is totally apt here. You know how when you’re just falling in love, you can’t sleep and you’re high on it and you don’t want to think about anything else? It’s obsession, right? The same thing happens to me when I get into a new project. This is great in the sense that I get a reprieve from actual romantic longing in my own life for a while, but in the process of my work, I almost always forget about my bodily/daily living needs.

I know this sounds (again) melodramatic and pretentious, but t’s nearly impossible to hold down a day job when you’re enslaved to your muse. And I don’t want that anymore. This is the habit I need to break. It’s almost like an addiction in that way. I don’t want it to consume me anymore; I want to tame it.

Anyway, this is the perfect time to learn how to manage my “habit”: go home for a while, have my own space to work, allot myself two hours a day, and force myself (or someone else) to stop me after that point. It’s all about rhythm, and I just have to adjust mine. Live in my body a little more instead of my head all the time.

Because right now, I’m hypomanic. For sure. Look at all this shit I just wrote and how fast my thoughts are racing; it’s obvious. But maybe if I can get on the right med regimen with the right life habits, I can have it all. I can have my bolts of inspiration AND a normal, happy, steady life. Maybe if I just go for a run instead of hitting a bottle of Jack, I can have everything I want. I can bring it all into balance without completely losing anything. I can have relationships with people instead of just my work and myself.

And maybe not. Maybe something’s gotta give, or something has to get dulled a little in order for me to have that. And maybe that’s a trade-off I can accept. All I know is, I’m totally open-minded, I’m ready to start a new life, and I’m ready to be better than I’ve ever been.

And I’m really excited about this project.

…Aaaaaand unfortunately, it’s too late for a run here. Maybe some living room yoga…

Fuck it, where’s the NyQuil….

**Chapters 1 & 2 would start in the physical middle of the book, diverging at a specific point in time. All the odd numbered chapters would move chronologically backward in time toward the front cover of the book, while the even numbered chapters would chronologically forward in time toward the back cover of the book. I had envisioned this structure for a memoir and tentatively titled it “Inside Out,” as the reader would literally read the book from the inside out. I wanted to employ this structure not just as a neat trick, but as a new twist on the classic American coming-of-age novel where we watch the protagonist grow as a person from the first chapter to the last. What I liked about telling the story in this way was how the contrast in character development grows ever more stark as the reader moves outward; with the penultimate chapter serving as the physical and chronological end of the story and the final chapter serving as the physical and chronological beginning of the story. Further, chapters 1&2, 3&4, etc., would all be thematic mirrors of each other, even though different plot events are takig place. I know it may sound rather out there and inaccessible, but I think my down-to-earth, conversational style saves it from pretension. I may still use this for my memoirs when I’m old enough to write them, which I am definitely not.

First of all, I want to send a big ole thanks again to all the people who sent well-wishes and shared stories with me after my previous post went up. I was floored. I must have received 20 or 30 messages from close friends and even casual acquaintances I haven’t seen in years. That’s a pretty hefty percentage of the roughly 400 people who viewed that post. What really surprised me is that clearly, a LOT of people are dealing with mood disorders in themselves or those close to them behind closed doors. It’s completely understandable that most people choose to keep it private; dealing with all this confusing crap is hard enough without everyone knowing about it. But it also made me feel really good about shouting it from the rooftops like a lunatic. Well, perhaps AS a lunatic.

But no, for cerealz, ya’ll, you’re the best. And please, if anyone who wrote to me about mood disorders, depression, whatevs (or anyone who hasn’t but wants to) EVER wants to talk more, or commiserate, or ask me anything about it, my door is always open and my phone is always on. Obviously, I’m navigating all this myself and don’t pretend to know anything more than anyone else, but I’m told I’m a good listener and it’s a skill I like to exercise often with the people I care about.

Anyway, once again, thank you. You all make my outrageous, unnecessary social risks seem worth it. And wtf is the big deal, anyway? A brilliant screenwriter friend of mine in LA went through something similar a few years ago and went home for a month for treatment. He reached out to me at the perfect moment, which I was incredibly grateful for, and his advice to me was both hilarious and quote-worthy:

“Don’t be scared. The scary part is not knowing. Or not admitting it to yourself. You know your deal. Bipolar is super common. There are meds. There’s therapy. This isn’t the fucking 1800′s…[fill in additional texting]…Shut the fuck up. You’ll go home, get it together, and come back and be fine. You have a mental problem? Boo hoo. Get in line. You’ll come back an awesome tigress and put us all to shame. That was my tough love. You’re entirely normal.”

Now, obviously, this is a little impotent military stepdad for my taste, but it was the perfect thing to hear at that moment. There was no pity in it, no I-knew-it-all-alongs, no…well, indulging me. Which was of course what I wanted, but not what I needed. He’s absolutely right. It’s a serious illness, and it’s dangerous to leave it untreated, and learning how to live with it might not be a quick or easy process, but it’s SO common, and plenty of people end up managing just fine once they finally face it.

And holy shit, out here in L.A., everyone is nuts. I watched Stephen Fry’s documentary on bipolar disorders a couple weeks ago, and he quoted some Hollywood producer giving advice to a struggling actor on how to land a good role: “you don’t have to be gorgeous, you don’t have to be Jewish, you just have to be bipolar.”

So again, the point of all this is not to diminish the seriousness of the illness or the task I have in front of me, it’s just to put things in perspective, and hopefully help others feel less self-conscious about their own mental issues. I mean, hell, isn’t it easier to just be open about it? I don’t want to have to make up some stupid excuse every time I don’t want to go out to a bar with my friends, or every time I’m awake for 48 hours glued to my laptop typing away. I mean, shit, this is the way it is for me, for now. I know when I’m hypomanic. I know when I’m depressed. I’m very in touch with my moods, I just don’t have control over them yet.

Right now, for example, I’m a little sped up. Not too bad, but enough to crank out a blog post. I didn’t sleep last night and I had a meeting today and I don’t feel tired at all. But really, that’s fine for right now. As long as I’m not boozing or putting myself in situations where impulsive behavior is especially dangerous, I’ll sleep when I sleep. It makes things worse when I panic about being in the mood itself. I can’t control that. What I can control is my environment and my coping mechanisms. Besides, I’m one of the lucky ones in that my manias never prompt me to go buy six Corvettes or sleep with an entire minor league baseball team, so hell, may as well be productive.

And see it’s so much easier for me to just be open about all this and laugh about it; be able to just ask a friend to remind me to eat a little something today if I’m Sheen-ing out a bit and know I won’t have an appetite. Or conversely, when I’m depressed, it’d be nice to have someone believe me when I say “nothing happened, you didn’t do anything wrong, I’m just bottoming out and it’ll pass in a few days.”

And the part that really sucks about not acknowledging all of it is that you start making attribution errors. You think, ‘oh, I feel X way, that must mean Y (and usually Y is myself) did/said something wrong.” And that’s natural, right? “Normal” peoples’ feelings are usually easy to trace to a particular source or event. But for me, a lot of the time, that stuff is just chemicals and neurotransmitters firing off in weird ways.

Side note: I recently started a low dose of an anti-seizure medication called Lamictal which seems to be helping since I finally caved and started actually taking it. For cyclothymia (bipolar lite), the hardcore mood stabilizers (your Lithiums, your Seroquels) usually aren’t used. Instead, anti-seizure medicines seem to work better. This is especially interesting to me since I had epilepsy as a child and has to be on these types of meds to prevent seizures until I was about 12. Leaves me wondering if there’s a connection — my darling mother had already emailed the Mayo Clinic asking the same thing the day before I even brought it up to her.

Which brings me to my darling family. We have been through a lot this past year, and really all our lives. Ya know, like most families. But my parents have gone above and beyond recently in educating themselves about all of this so that they can understand me better. My mom has been going to N.A.M.I. meetings (the National Alliance of Mental Illness) and talking with tons of other people who have bipolar children and family members, and that has made an enormous difference in our communication. It’s like night and day. My father put it best when he said “we’re yelling at each other about things we don’t understand.” It doesn’t mean we don’t have underlying disagreements, or things that are legitimate points of contention, but taking this massive weight off of all of it makes everything much more manageable. Anyway, I’m really grateful for all the time they have put in recently educating themselves and being there for me.

And so it is in shockingly good spirits that I find myself preparing to pack up the ole Escape and drive home to Cincinnati for a while. God knows I love road trips and alone time and creepy motels, so I think it might actually be kinda nice. I’m going through Denver so that I can stop for a few days and see my old roommates and comedy friends before I tackle the second half of the trip. I can’t wait to see my old friends and enjoy the mountains for a few days. Hope I don’t get altitude sickness; my tolerance sure ain’t what it used to be since I’ve been living below sea level for five months.

Truth be told, I’m shocked at how totally not upset I am, and how easy it is to let go of my usual urge to scream “BY THE HAMMER OF THOR, I’LL BE BACK TO CONQUER YOU, L.A.!!!” Frankly, who knows. I can’t plan that far ahead right now and I don’t need to. I’ll come back if and when I want to. When the time is right. Ironically enough, my original pilot has only very recently started to attract the attention of some influential folks. I’m glad to be leaving a line in the water out here, but I’m not willing to sit on my ass watching that bobber. I’ve made valuable, supportive friends out here and some excellent contacts who love my work. Both they and my talent will still be here six months from now.

And I think that realization is a big part of why I feel okay with all this: I need to trust that I’m always going to write. My passion is not a part of my illness that will be medicated away, it’s a part of me, and I’ll always have it. To just fucking love something the way I love writing is such a huge gift, because no one can ever take it away from you. It’s all yours. I can still write screenplays in Ohio, and it doesn’t matter at all where I write a book. J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter while she and her kids were living in the Irish projects. I mean, I should at least pull off some R.L. Stine Goosebumps shit from Cincinnati, right? Anyway, I know I want to settle on a project before I get home so that I can use it as my security blanket through all this. Something I can make steady progress on every day while other parts of my life are inevitably going to take two steps forward and one step back.

I’m sure I’ll at least get part-time work, maybe waiting tables or something. Until then I definitely want to do some volunteer work. Maybe tutoring underprivileged kids in English. I used to do a lot more volunteering and I was at my best when I was doing it.

And last but certainly not least, I’m fortunate as hell that I can go live on my own at my parents’ place on the Ohio River if I want. I love it out there next to the water, kinda out in the boonies with a bunch of friendly, intriguing hill people who build bonfires roughly as high as your average theme park water slide. Anyway, it’s gorgeous out there and very private and peaceful. Great place to write. And even if I decide to live with my parents for a while, it’s nice to know there’s a place to run off to 20 minutes away.

Yeah, don’t feel bad for me.

Beats the hell out of air mattresses and peoples’ living rooms, no? After two years as a nomad wandering around the country living like a goddamned crazy gypsy, I’m eeeehhhh, ya know, looking forward to some creature comforts.

So yeah, things look…good. Really good, in fact. This is definitely the right decision for right now. I’m not throwing in the towel on my writing at all, and I’ll probably still perform stand-up locally as long as I’m feeling up to it and can make it work with my lifestyle. I’m just taking a damn break. And I feel good about it.

I’m still convinced I’m going to get all the things I came out here seeking, and that this is just the next step in that process. I’m 100% ready to tackle all this. Truth be told, it’s a huge relief to just face it and deal with it.

So it’s been real, L.A.! Thanks for the memories. I’ll miss the entertainingly horrible dates and the West Coast burgers. I won’t miss the traffic.

Now for the love of God, cross your fingers that I get to sleep at a decent hour tonight. If worse comes to worst, I’ll just turn on C-SPAN or call a friend who wants to talk about her baby.

Well, not exactly in the way you might assume, though Nicki Minaj could probably turn me under the right circumstances. Oh who am I kidding, Nicki Minaj could definitely turn me under any circumstances.

No, what I mean is, I’m officially coming out as bipolar. I am bipolar. That’s a fact, that’s the way it is, it’s a part of who I am, and those close to me should know and understand that. I’m bipolar.

I’ve danced around it, joked about it, tried to water it down as merely a personality trait rather than an illness. I’ve fought tooth and nail for 27 years to deny it or “make it work for me.” I’ve tried literally everything I can think of to not have to truly admit it to myself and everyone else. But I’m done running.

The fact is, I am manic depressive and have been all my life. If I keep insisting it’s not really that serious, or that my gifts can eclipse my deficits, or that someday someone will snap their fingers and I will magically be normal, I’m going to end up dead.

This is not an exaggeration, thrown out haphazardly in a moment of desperation. In fact, right now I am enjoying a fairly rare day of normal, balanced mood. I feel fine. And so it is with a cool, rational distance from my feelings that I nevertheless know this fact to be true:

If I don’t deal with my illness, it will kill me.

I am finally beginning to accept that this disease isn’t just a phase, or a personality quirk, or simply a symptom of immaturity. No. This is a real disease of the brain that kills people.

The numbers are rather grim. Approximately:
- 20% of bipolar sufferers successfully commit suicide.
- 40% cannot work a day job and must live with and depend on their families for their entire lives.
- 20% manage to function/hold down menial jobs but never achieve their desired career or family goals.
- 20% achieve some form of remission and are able to live successful, high-functioning lives.

All of these categories have contained high achievers in politics, science, and the arts: Winston Churchill, Pat Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Isaac Newton, Friedrich Neitzsche, Jack Kerouac, Robin Williams, and interestingly enough, my personal idol Maria Bamford. The list goes on and on.

The list also includes Kurt Cobain, Ernest Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, Virginia Woolf, Amy Winehouse, and lots of other, well, dead people. The ones in five.

And so I think it’s understandable that I’ve resisted accepting membership into this dangerous if fascinating club. Also, it’s worth noting that not all bipolar people possess accompanying creative genius. In fact, the vast majority of them are just normal, unsexy crazy people with an illness that ruins their own and others’ lives.

…maybe I should’ve used “us,” there. Jury’s still out.

But trying to ignore or cope with bipolarity on one’s own is about as wise as DIY diabetes treatment. You can ignore that shit, but it ain’t going anywhere. It’s going to manifest somehow, and if you don’t have any control over how it manifests, you have no hope whatsoever of living a normal life.

And look, I’ll be honest, coming to that realization is fucking hard. It takes a long time. And when you get there, it is overwhelmingly sad. It is terrifying. More than anything, it is maddening.

My particular brand of bipolarity (and there are many) is rapid cycling and characterized by periods of mild depression followed by hypomania. Some docs would call this “cyclothymia,” (Darryl Hammond just wrote a great book about his own struggle with this iteration of the disease, btw), but it doesn’t really matter what label you slap on it. Basically, on the surface, I have a milder form of the disorder. When I’m hypomanic, I just present as charismatic, quick-witted, productive, and social. When I’m depressed, I just stay in bed and hide from the world for a couple days until I’m back on the upswing. I’ve hardly ever had full-blown mania with psychotic symptoms and delusions, and I’ve hardly ever had depression that was so bad I literally couldn’t move. But my disease could quickly worsen to those states if left untreated.

Now obviously, I’m glad I don’t typically have full-blown mania or major depression, but my version of the disease has dangers all its own; namely that I am much more prone to “mixed states,” which happen when the most insidious elements of mania and depression occur simultaneously. Think racing thoughts that suddenly go from optimistic and connective to dark and destructive. Mixed states are, perhaps not surprisingly, among the more creatively fertile periods for a bipolar sufferer. And this makes sense: all that friction is bound to create a spark. They’re also the most dangerous mood state, because it combines the impulsivity of mania with the hopelessness of depression. Winston Churchill elucidated the risks of this state when he talked about standing on the platform at a train station:

“I don’t like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand right back and if possible get a pillar between me and the train. I don’t like to stand by the side of a ship and look down into the water. A second’s action would end everything. A few drops of desperation.” – Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

And there’s the really dangerous spot for bipolar bears; that mixed state.

Anyway, the following is a description of how the cycle typically goes for me, and it goes fast. If this all sounds exhausting, it is. And in my case, it’s also greatly exacerbated by my hormonal fluctuations throughout the month, as well. I’m kinda of laughing to myself thinking about all the people in my life who will read this and think “yep, that’s her” or “Ooooh, so that’s what was going on…” Anyway, here’s a snapshot:

Let’s say on Monday my brain is depressive. My body feels like it has the flu; my muscles literally ache, I’m completely wiped of my energy, I sleep for 10 hours at a time with no problem, I don’t crave nicotine nearly as much, I crave food. My reflexes are slower. It’s all I can do to trudge through a day of work, and often I can’t. My mind is so foggy that I literally can’t focus on even the simplest tasks. I get teary and have to get up from my desk to hide in a bathroom stall and cry. I make up excuses for what is wrong (“I have a horrible headache,” “my grandma is sick,” “I just broke up with my boyfriend”) because I can’t explain what’s actually wrong, because I myself don’t understand what’s wrong. My bosses and coworkers believe me, because the rest of the time I’m so upbeat and productive that they’re willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. I go home from work completely drained. I almost get into car accidents because I’m so sleepy and unfocused. I forget the details of my daily life; when to pay bills, take my car for an oil change, get my teeth cleaned. I don’t answer the phone when my family and friends call because I want them to think I’m fine, and I know that in a few days, I will be fine. I’ll talk to them then so they won’t worry. I have writing projects I know I should work on, but I just stare at the blinking cursor on my lap top for fifteen minutes until I break down in sobs. I put the computer away, pull the covers over my head, and stay in bed and sleep until the next day of work.

And the next day at work is a little better. And the day after that I’m well-rested and feel basically normal. I can get things done at a normal pace. I’m keeping up again.

And then I start to feel better, and I’ve been all antisocial the past few days, so I really should get out, I think. I should be with people again; it’ll be good for me. Everyone’s wondering why I’ve been MIA. Maybe I’ll go perform a set somewhere tonight. Yeah. I’ll do that. Definitely.

And then I get a little restless at work. I don’t wanna do all this shit, I want to do fun stuff. I want to think of funny tweets. I want to work on my script. I want to talk to people. I want more coffee. I want another cigarette. I want to get the fuck out of here why can’t I get out of here UGH it feels like a prison I could be doing a million other things I bet I could finish that script tonight if I wanted to I have that new idea to make the plots intersect. I want more coffee. I want another cigarette. Ew, I don’t want the rest of this sandwich, my mouth is too dry.

I bust out of work at five on the dot like a freed slave. On the way home I call all of the people I’ve been ignoring and we talk and laugh and talk and hang up smiling. I’m chain smoking out my window, music turned up almost as loud as it’ll go. I’m singing along to rap lyrics I didn’t even know I knew while simultaneously writing an entirely new stand-up set in my head. I have to pull over to write down a joke or I’m sure I’ll lose it.

Here we go; this is me. I’m back. I’m riding the wave instead of drowning in it. I’m turned all the way up, firing on all cylinders, sharp as a diamond hatchet. There are five shades of meaning in every word someone utters, every roadside sign, every number that flashes on a clock or a phone or a computer, there are a million hidden associations and I’m seeing them all at once. I’m connecting all the dots that other people aren’t seeing.

But I know better than to say anything about this.

I get home, hop in the shower, do my hair and makeup meticulously, and head to the comedy club to do a set. I can’t get there fast enough. Fuck these red lights. Fuck this song, I’m changing the channel. Ugh, I hate this song, too. YES I love this song!! Goddamn it, that light was yellow for like 10 seconds! Go, lady!!!

After what seems like an eternity, I get to the club. I’m greeted by my friends who all light up when they see me. I want to talk to them, see how they’re doing, really listen to them the way no one else does. I’m listening with all five senses, cutting through the bullshit with ease, delivering insights that strike people like lightning. I am walking contagion, I’m bursting at the seams and other people want a piece. They unconsciously gravitate toward me like freezing travelers to a campfire; they don’t know why, but I do. They want to tap into my frequency for a second, they want to feel a little bit of that electric current coarse through their veins. They want to escape the crushing weight of normalcy for a moment, and I can give that to them. Yes, everyone likes this person, so this must be me. This is the REAL me. This is me at my best. Everyone wants to sit around this fire.

But no one wants to stick their hand in it.

And then I start to get restless. I’m looking to spar but no one else can keep up. I’m unbeatable, but untouchable, like a frenzied Super Mario high on an invincibility star dashing through obstacles like a human strobe light.

Someone forgot to take his Lithium…

Everywhere I go, I want more, sooner, faster. I have so many ideas for books, scripts, inventions, websites, that I can’t possibly write them all down fast enough.

All the while, I know better than to say anything about this. I’m smart. Even in my current state, I retain keen self-awareness. I know what will set off alarms and what won’t. Apparently, I even know how to convince the psychiatric consultants of a major television network that I’m sane enough for reality television. And maybe that’s because part of me still believes it.

But here, now, I’m uncomfortable. There’s not enough stimulation, no one is playing in my league. I’ll have a beer. That’ll settle me down. I’ll still be sharp without all the irritability; I’ll be fun again. I’ll HAVE fun again. Just one beer and I’ll be back down on everyone else’s level. I’ll be able to connect again.

But it’s not enough, not tonight. I want another one. And then another one. My mind still won’t slow down, it’s still insatiable, it wants more. I’m still burning and I want to burn out. I’m still burning, the only difference is the fire has gone from orange to blue. I have to get out of here, I have to go be alone and write. I have to get it out on a page. It has to go somewhere, it can’t stay in here. There’s not enough room.

I smile and say my goodbyes and give hugs and get numbers. I have been enchanting as usual. Everyone will call tomorrow wanting to see me.

I go home and I sit with my laptop for hours on end. I have work tomorrow, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except the immediacy of this need. I look up and 7 hours have gone by. It’s morning. I have to leave for work in an hour. I’m not even really sure what I’ve written; I’ll read it later. I have to get up and shower and go to work. If I can do that, I’m still normal and everything is okay.

I get to work and I should be exhausted, but I’m not. I’m productive and happy and alert. I want more coffee. I want another cigarette. No, I don’t want a bagel. Yes, I’ll go out with you, so-and-so from last night. I feel fine, why wouldn’t I? See? Everything’s okay. I went out and performed and got drunk and wrote for all that time, and I’m not even paying for it. I’m fine. I just function better than other people.

I go home from work and I go on my date and I come home and I can’t sleep that night, either. I get maybe two hours. Start to feel slap-happy and goofy as hell the day after that, and then that subsides by mid-afternoon and now I’m feeling worse. And by that evening, I feel a LOT worse, but I still can’t sleep. This is the most horrible part; the mixed state. One minute I’m giggling like a kid, the next I’m sobbing in the shower. I drink again, this time alone in my bed, and it transforms that urgent impulse from creative to destructive. Instead of picking up my laptop and writing, I consider picking up a gun and seeing what it would feel like in the back of my throat.

I know that’s a horrible thing to say, but it’s also true. And I say it with the intention of getting to a point when I never feel like that again.

Anyway, yeah, I think that. But I don’t do it, thank God. Some part of me knows it’ll pass. Not for long, but I’ll have at least a few days soon where I’m even-tempered again before the “black dog” (as Churchill termed it) returns. I can make it. There’s enough good in there.

And when I wake up the morning after, the noisy batch of devils has left me in my sleep, right on schedule. The destructive impulse is gone now, but so is everything else, including my last ounce of physical energy. My poor malnourished body feels like it has mono, and everything hurts, I can’t get out of bed, and the cycle starts all over again.

And folks, I’m ready to be done with this. I am terrified, I am embarrassed, I am frustrated, but I am resigned. There are people who beat this shit, or at least find a way to live independently with it, and I am going to be one of them. My insight, self-awareness, and sense of humor are huge advantages I have working in my favor, as is my family who has rallied around me in touching ways recently. So much unnecessary pain has been caused by all of us fighting this reality for far too long, and I think everyone believes brighter days are ahead for all of us. It’s not gonna happen overnight. I’m going back to Ohio. I will probably enter an inpatient facility for a while (which should be at least a little hilarious, if initially terrifying). I’m gonna shore up my strength, find new ways to cope, experiment with different meds. For once, I’m not gonna jump the gun. I’m gonna relax and take my time with all this. I have to get back to basics, and I’m sick, so no, I cannot do it on my own. That is perhaps the hardest part for me to accept.

And there’s a lot about this that is hard to accept. This is how I’ve been my entire life; I’ve never known anything else. Who the hell am I under here? Will anyone like that person? Who’s ever gonna marry “the bipolar girl?” What if I never feel that manic, inspired high ever again? What if I lose my quick wit and my charisma? Jesus, what if I’m never stable enough to have kids? Or, worst of all:

What if I can’t write anymore?

So I’m scared, yeah. I’m really, really scared. But it’s important to me to be open about all this because the taboo surrounding mental illness, and the painful stigma associated with it, is a huge part of what has prevented me and countless others from accepting a diagnosis and getting treatment. I’m very lucky to still be alive and I have every intention of staying that way. I am bipolar, yeah, but I’m also really talented and intelligent. So maybe my normal won’t ever look like everyone else’s normal, but it really doesn’t matter, as long as I can find a normal that works for me and makes me happy.

I have every intention of coming back out to Los Angeles, or chasing my big dreams wherever else they may lead. This isn’t the end for me, I’m just laying a new foundation to re-launch from.