An Explanation

I’ve debated whether or not I should write about this topic for a couple months. As some of you realize, and anyone could see by looking at the dates on my posts, I’ve been relatively inactive in the blogosphere for nearly three months. Yesterday was my first real attempt to resume where I’d left off, and parts of me would like to think that this will continue. As I made clear in my March post, it was for health concerns that I took a break from blogging and the Internet in general. Since then, I’ve received comments and E-mails wishing me better health, encouraging me to resume blogging when I’m able, and encouraging me to give myself the time I need – I have appreciated these more than I’m able to express, and I think a proper explanation is in order …

I’ve had, over the past year that I’ve been blogging, periods where it seems I have one idea after another of things to write about. There have been a few times where I’ve felt blessed with a creative urge that would allow me to stay awake for days, just plugging away at thoughts and ideas … I would think to myself during these phases that I must truly be tasting what it’s like to be connected. Boundless energy, at-will creativity, and a certain buoyancy of spirit were characteristic of these phases (as was often a high degree of irritability). And during these times, it wasn’t just my blogging productivity that seemed to spike – I could accomplish a multitude of things, seemingly without effort. There are people who take drugs to experience periods of time like this, and at times I would pat myself on the back for having touched on a means by which to do all of this without those drugs.

Then the coin would flip.

I used to have the habit of saving drafts of posts I wanted to work on in the future (during my ‘creative’ phases, I would have so many things I wanted to write about, and so many ideas for how to write about them, that it was impossible even with my energy to fully develop all of them). Essentially, the plan was simply to save them for later, when I might not have so many ideas. When the ‘creative’ phase would end, it would typically do so with a crashing abruptness, and it was as if my mind got turned upside down. Where I’d have had so many ideas spinning around in my mind that it was difficult just to concentrate, I’d all of a sudden have zero ideas, zero creativity. I would look at the drafts I’d saved for myself and wonder where the hell I’d come up with those ideas – no matter how hard I bent my head around it, I couldn’t seem to make the words come to develop those ideas. There was also the darker reaction, that none of those drafts were worth developing in the first place. Everything else in my life suffered from this same, sudden lack of energy. Sometimes, I would be in such an energetic and creative deficit that I would simply take some time away from the Internet. That, and a lot of what was running through my mind during those times wasn’t worth sharing.

This basically gives a little insight into one aspect of my life (blogging), an aspect that has existed for just a little over a year – the same thing that motivated these sudden shifts has affected every aspect of my life, for what seems now to likely have been most of my life. That ‘thing’ is called bipolar disorder, and I was diagnosed with having this shortly before I took my three-month hiatus. The funny thing about bipolar disorder is that the kinds of creative phases some people would take drugs to experience, I now take medication to control.

For those who are unfamiliar with what bipolar disorder is, it is basically a mood disorder whereby the emotional / mood regulators in the brain don’t quite work the way they should. This disorder seems to be caused by genetic – as well as environmental – factors. Essentially, one inherits the genetic predisposition or potential, and life factors touch off that powder keg. Someone with bipolar disorder (BD) can go from the deepest pit of depression to the highest level of mania in pretty short order, for no real apparent reason, which is why this disorder was referred to as ‘manic-depression’ in the past. It seems that there is more of a tendency nowadays to move BD out of the depression category of mood disorders and into its own category / spectrum. From what I’ve seen online, it seems BD is grouped in severity more often with schizophrenia than with ‘unipolar’ depression … it is often mistaken for or confused with schizophrenia, Tourette Syndrome, or ADHD. BD must also be treated with medication, lithium being the most commonly prescribed, ideally in combination with psychotherapy – the treatment plan is lifelong. The goal of treatment is not a cure, which doesn’t exist, but rather finding a happy balance, then trying to lock it in place with medication and daily routines. Just finding this happy balance can take years of treatment. I explained to someone a couple weeks ago that with this diagnosis, I wasn’t handed a death sentence, but a life sentence … I’ll leave it up to more agile minds than mine to determine which is better and for which reasons. I will say that there is at least some relief in knowing what it is I’m up against.

Around the end of February, it seemed like I was having a pretty bad reaction to the medication I was put on. This was also the time when I stopped blogging. Once I recovered from whatever it was that hit me, I had to wait a couple months before being allowed to try the medication again. As you might imagine, my mind and focus were flying pretty wildly during this period … imagine being given a diagnosis like this, having an ultra-painful reaction to the medication that’s supposed to bring some relief from the symptoms, then running around unmedicated for a few months due to your doctor having a one-month vacation and a one-month waiting list for appointments. Although my blog and its readers are important to me, I found myself not in the mood to blog – I considered at several points (once even this past weekend) just shutting the blog down outright … building something up, then tearing it all down is apparently a bipolar trait. Oddly enough, one of the things that always stood in the way of shutting the blog down was my NNV series, specifically the virtue of Perseverance. I said at the beginning of this series that I would discuss each of the virtues, and I don’t like the idea of breaking my word.

As for what I would like to do now with this blog, I’m not quite sure. I don’t plan to turn it into a ‘Bipolar Heathen’ blog – admitting that a part of my mind is malfunctioning is vexing enough, I have no desire to dwell on it beyond this post … although an examination of genetic disorders and family Wyrd could make for an interesting (and likely explosive) topic. I know that I was also not pleased with the direction my blog seemed to be heading three months ago, and that this displeasure was not something that could simply be attributed to a mood swing. In all probability, I will keep this blog active – my thoughts of shutting it down can be attributed to mood swings, as far as I’m concerned – but it is probable that I will try to limit my posting and involvement in other projects, and make a few adjustments to this blog’s direction. From what I understand, the medication I’m on may wind up not being the right medication, or I might have to add new medications to it, and all of this will take periods of time to adjust to – even the medication I’m now on will have to be adjusted several times, just to determine whether or not it’s going to work for me – this means it’s quite possible that there will be more periods in the future in which I seem to vanish, and I hope that you, who have been patient and interested enough to read along up to this point, will also be patient enough to understand my absences from the blogosphere in the future. I thank you for the patience and understanding you’ve shown so far – for this, I figured that I owed you an explanation.