Month: May 2022

Blank Bow Tie o’ the Day accurately expresses what I accomplished with the third week of my unintentional sabbatical. That week was very much like the second week, but without the obsessive Touched By An Angel fugue state that overcame me—which I wrote about in this morning’s post. I seemed to be physically handling my newest medication much better, but I think I had been somewhat zombie-fied by the altered states of the previous two weeks. I was wrung out.

I will forever refer to that third week as My Week O’ “I Don’t Know.” Suzanne would routinely ask me how I was feeling each day, and I would pause for a minute to really think about it and truly assess my physical and mental states of being, and my answer to her was consistently, “I don’t know.” My psyche wasn’t swinging around wildly on my bipolar pendulum. Nor was it improving by leaps and bounds or Mother-May-I-scissor-hops. I was simply hanging around while breathing—alive, but with no real urge to go anywhere or do anything. Neither did I have an urge to do nothing. I was urgeless. I just was.

The writer in me was not blocked. I merely glanced upon my extensive stash of cool notebooks and writing instruments, and I felt nary an urge to create even a sentence. I ordered a couple of books (or a dozen, if I’m honest), but couldn’t muster up the inclination to open any of the covers after they were delivered to my front door. I did not pine away for words—not my own or anybody else’s. “I don’t know,” was my mantra, my soundtrack, my gist. As a longtime pro at being bipolar, I did not panic at merely existing. I did not fight the non-feeling. I knew that waiting it out, if I could, would be my best shot.

Unfortunately, as the third week of my sudden and involuntary online absence from TIE O’ THE DAY turned into an entire month—as I was caught in my own personal “I dunno”— a damaging metaphorical nugget of poison was growing somewhere inside of me. It wasn’t going to be pretty, and y’all won’t want to miss how it all played out. Tune in tomorrow for more of my navel-gazing.

So after that first week of taking a new head med and trudging through its paralyzing menu of new side effects, the second week of my online absence seemed to go a bit better. My doc made a couple of dosage tweaks that improved my “crazy head” state of mind. I think my bipolar noggin was at least moving in the direction of making the proper adjustments, but I was having a difficult time knowing for sure. And why was that? Because something stranger-than-fiction began to happen: I found myself streaming the entire series of Touched By An Angel during all of my awake hours, and then some. When Suzanne left for work in the morning, I was staring intently at whatever drama was unfolding on Touched By An Angel. And when she got home from work, I was still sitting in exactly the same place on the loveseat, watching yet another episode of yet another tv-scripted predicament that could only be resolved successfully with 3-angel-help.

Suzanne knew I wasn’t right in my head. Even I knew I wasn’t right in my head, but I couldn’t put down the heavenly Roku remote. I mean no disrespect to those of y’all who might be fans of Touched By An Angel, but let me be clear: it is not my kind of tv show. I don’t think I had ever managed to make it through an entire episode when it was on television. Its sappy, too cute, predictable, two-syllable writing is simply not to my taste. I am a non-linear, foggy motive, bigly-vocabulary-laden dialogue, layered existential complications kind of girl. But here I was, spending an entire week watching every minute of every episode of Touched By An Angel. I even watched a few episodes twice!

For that entire week, I was still unable to focus on reading books or writing books. I was doing better, but I was clearly not out of the proverbial woods just yet. (Stay tuned for more of my lost-weeks account.)

BTW When I took the selfie for this post, I was channeling the angel theme. I was thinking of angel wings, and the only winged prop I had was my flying pig hat. I think it was the spot-on accessory for just such a post.

My prescription Tie o’ the Day is a fitting prop to wear in this selfie which accompanies my first real post since Easter weekend. You see, my tblog “disapearance” began with what was supposed to be a somewhat minor adjustment to my medication routine for my bipolar brain. Occasionally, the same meds regimen that has kept the problem in-check in the past ceases to work as effectively. Sometimes an adjustment in dosage is all that’s necessary to put things back on track. Sometimes a more effective med can replace an older med that—for whatever reason—no longer keeps my mind from fighting with itself. Usually, the changes are relatively smooth and the side effects are minimal. Around Easter, in order to make what I felt was a much-needed alteration to my existing meds regimen, I was prescribed a med that was entirely new to me. That’s when I fell off the TIE O’ THE DAY map. For the next week, I wrote nothing. I read nothing. I could focus on nothing. I curled up into a pajama-covered ball in a corner of the love seat, where I clutched the armrest with both hands—my fingernails dug in tightly. It was going to be a bumpy ride. 😳 😱 Stay tuned for more.

I’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do in regard to my abrupt and weeks-long online absence. And I will certainly attempt to offer up the highlights and lowlights when TIE O’ THE DAY resumes on Monday morning. Meanwhile, here’s the dark purple Bow Tie o’ the Day I wore for our Mother’s Day visit with Big-but-shrinking Helen. Mom has been an extraordinary mother. I lucked out bigly when I was born hers.