This selfie shows me wearing a painted wood Bow Tie o’ the Day while venturing to my evaluation appointment at the U of U’s University Neuropsychiatric Institute (UNI) a month ago. I felt like I was due for a tune-up. And I certainly was.
I apologize for not showing up as scheduled to entertain here on TIE O’ THE DAY over the last few days. I’ve disappeared like this before, and I hate it. And I’ll probably disappear like this again, and I’ll hate it again. Occasionally, my neckwear and I go off-grid. We don’t try to scram, but we scram anyway. The posts simply stop. And then our presence eventually pops-up online again, as if we’d never been absent.
I seriously try to be a person who can be counted on. If I say I’m going to post about neckwear twice per day, I feel obligated to do it– whether anyone reads the posts or not. I think most people who know me will tell you I am a gal of my word. But sometimes, I find I have disappeared.
I don’t run off to have a “lost weekend” in Boozeville. I’m not in-hiding from the Feds because I once robbed an armored car and the G-men are now hot on my bow tie trail. Nope. I don’t go under the radar to secretly catch more than my legal limit of fish. I don’t pole dance on dark stages in my birthday suit– for the tip money I “forget” to pay taxes on. Nah. My “bad” is my bipolar paralysis. I get frozen– but not out of fear or indecision. The best way I can describe the “feeling” is this: It’s a frozen agony of nothing and everything, combined.
In TIE O’ THE DAY posts, I have always been open with y’all about my adventures in being bipolar. Most of the time, I’m a pro at wrangling both the mania and the depression into beasts I can live with– to the point that I can often re-make them into charming characteristics. My bipolarity makes my brain feel like a metaphorical pendulum. I know the arc and rhythms of its movement so well that its changes are somewhat routine to me. I know the extreme bungee-cord swings and bounces will eventually give way to more of a porch-glider back-and-forth feel. They always have.
But these days, I find myself at a place on my pendulum’s arc where I’ve never been stationed quite like this before. The damn pendulum itself seems stuck, defying the laws of its own physics. My old tricks to keep my ship upright need some sharpening up as well, so tomorrow I begin an out-patient treatment at UNI. (I’ll explain the treatment in another post.) I’ll drive myself to and from UNI for treatment every weekday, for the next six weeks. Ah, the joys of city traffic! And suddenly, my calendar is full. Unfortunately, it’s full of a bunch of stuff I’d rather not do. Oh, well.
Of course, I’ll write about the treatment escapades whenever I can. Maybe I’ll just post a photo sometimes. I’ll do whatever I can make happen. I will try my best to not simply disappear, cuz I know how much y’all miss the neckwear when I don’t post. And don’t think for one minute that you’ll ever miss out on HAIRS THURSDAY. Suzanne will make sure I get those pics posted for you, even if she has to post them herself.
Anyhoo… I’ll write about my bipolarity developments for the same reasons I write about anything I write here: maybe you’ll find it interesting, or funny, or enlightening, or all of the above. Maybe it can help somebody else out. I can only write about my life. Who else’s life do I know as much about? But I hope to connect somehow.
Let me be clear: I am ok, and I will be ok. I’m hoping this new treatment protocol will make me even okay-er. I’m viewing my impending course of treatments as just more life experience– from which to learn; by which to be amused; and throughout which to wear bow ties. But I’m pretty sure it won’t be as fantastic as my hot air balloon ride in Albuquerque. I am realistic about things like that.