Half Life

Well, I've discovered the half life of Tegretol.
Ok, the WHOLE life, cause right now is when I have come back to myself.
Just in time for the holidays, I guess.
Whole life must be 6 weeks. It was the last week of September that I ingested my last dose.

Is it so unlike me to go against what the doctors say?
Not really. And once again, I am SO ok with it.

Dropped the kids off to school. Needed some me time. Went to the Rail. Had french toast and sausage. With syrup= yum. And long islands. Fed some money into the juke box, listened to all the great voices.

Its weird, cause when you think of drugs, and being altered, you think of alcohol, and meth, and pot, and cocaine, and all those street friendly drugs.

But thats not the jist of it.
There is blank......
the dead.......
the white.......
the blah.......
the even......
the bland.....
the white noise........
and all of this under a doctor's care.
This is the intended effect of the meds.

I learned about bipolar in school.
How people are very non-compliant because the drugs take the "high" away.
Well, the drugs took ME away.
And I would rather have a bad day.
OK, a hundred, thousand bad days,
than to be NOT me.
Than to never feel again.

I put on Amy Winehouse - and felt her.
And Comfortably Numb. And I was.
And Korn. And felt I was Coming Undone.

There is this thing, I can't really explain it, its probably one of those things only kindred spirits can know. Its a physical surge, a physical climax, during certain music. It will hit me unexpectedly, but is is all too genuine. Maybe I'm speaking in bipolar, or in musician language, I don't really care. I can only describe it. It kinda starts in my lower back, and goes all the way up to my head, or jaw, or somewhere, a tingling. It when music really gets me. Its never the "right" music, the right group, it never listens to the appropriate. It just is. It only happens when I feel it. And it happened today. Its been so long. I used to feel it all the time. During Mozarts requiem, during the cantata at Tempe church for christmas, during Butterfly kisses, during Manson. It is a nondiscriminatory feeling. It is blind to the "right kind" of music. It happens when it happens. And it is happening again.

I WILL NEVER TAKE TEGRETOL AGAIN.

My half life is over.
My whole life is back.
Bad or good.

I am too great of a person, to not be me.

To not be me.

The 5 stages of Loss.
Kubler Ross.
I recognize a little denial lately. That this isn't really me. That I was misdiagnosed. That its over, It isn't happening anymore.

That THEY were wrong.

BUT.....
I just need to accept it, and deal with it, and embrace it, and recognize it.

Me is someone I need to get to know and accept, but someone I've known all along.

I can smell the winter grass again.
I can feel Manson again.
And Diana Krall.
And Sinatra.
And Chopin.
I can taste a raindrop again.
And cheesecake.
And the cool breeze.
And the orgasms of life.
The plain and simple that are just glorious.
Me.


Me.


Me.


I never knew how brave I needed to be.