Mental illness is usually not visible to the naked eye, or the private eye for that matter, or even the naked private eye, although, candidly, if you’re being followed by a naked private eye he’s the one that needs to be concerned about mental illness, not you – but enough about me. My point, which is moving across the landscape with the alacrity of a Tasmanian sloth, is this: Whackadoomians have the option of keeping their mental state a secret, a mental state secret – if you will – and if you won’t, I will, so it works out. This seems like a tremendous relief, and in many ways it is, after all this is personal information, often awkward, which we might prefer to keep to ourselves.

It’s been a long time since I had a manic episode, but I certainly remember them vividly. One of the hallmark components was an intense sense of urgency. I lived entirely in the moment, a state of being at once exhilarating and terrifying. It was as if I had been cut loose from the restrictions of time; I had no past or future. My existence resembled the reality described by William Blake – infinity in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour. When one is strapped to the nose cone of a rocket one does not think much about time – one thinks about each instant as it happens. An essential element of living successfully through every manic moment, for me at least, was the ability to move wherever, whenever, I wished. Boundaries of any sort were anathema to me. I was always ahead of the moment, faster than reality, pushing life along so it would catch up with me. I was ready for whatever came next even though I had no idea what that might be. I flicked the ashes off my cigarettes before there were any. At bars and restaurants I always paid in cash – using exact change – so that I was free at the exact moment anxiousness set in. To fully embrace the feeling of absolute freedom I felt it was necessary to believe I was already prepared for what was to come. I was hyper-vigilant.

Here’s a heart-felt Happy New Year to all of you in Whackadoomia and points beyond; and keep an eye out for what points beyond what’s out there because my point is usually even beyond that. Let’s hope this brand new year, replete with pleasant promise and fearsome foreboding, is kind to us and ours, ceremoniously serving circumstances far superior to what we deserve. Yes, it’s that tiresome time once again, when pundits, wags, and bow-tie wearing after-dinner speakers bloviate ad infinitum as they summarize by-gone events and predict what will soon come to be or not to be.

Americans are obsessed with fame, which they see as a passport to emotional well being, validation, respect, better tables at restaurants, wealth, improved dating options, and immortality. This perspective is jejune, puerile, naïve, and stupid. Fame is very different than what one imagines, as I have discovered since joining the Healthy Place team and penning my delightful weekly mental health humor blog, “Funny In The Head”. Prior to joining Healthy Place I was an aspiring poet, novelist, memoirist, cartoonist and Taz Mopulist marooned in obscurity; stitching and unstitching my agonized, overwrought, self-indulgent verbal constructions with the sort of doom and fatalism usually reserved for reading novels by J.P. Sartre. Family members frequently posted my first driver’s license photo on milk cartons with the melancholic question, “Have You Seen Me?” I could have made a tidy sum consulting for the FBI’s Witness Protection Program.

One troubling symptom of mental illness is an unsettling belief that one is receiving communication from an unknown other wrapped with the utmost subtlety in various coded communiqués. What did he mean by that? – you might ask – indeed – if I know you – and I don’t – you did – or did you? You see my point. The universe itself, steered by some invisible hand wrapped in a cellophane glove, is apparently stirring symbols of every description – words, pictographs, numbers, sounds – into a bubbling stew that is very, very you – and yet – there is no way to be certain what, if anything, it all means. Thus we confront the central challenge that mental illness presents, which is – am I one frog’s leg shy of an entrée at a chic French bistro, or, conversely, is the world simply bonkers whether or not I am in it? One may labor over this debate at great length and come up empty.

Have you heard this one already? Three clinically depressed high-jumpers walk into a bar. They lower it. I’m kidding of course. Then again, I’m not kidding, (as always), because if there is anything that will help today’s mentally ill individual survive the three-ring-circus of psychological torment and emotional Armageddon known by that deceptively sweet euphemism – the holidays – it is lowered expectations. Why? With every layer of tinsel, every rehashed Christmas chestnut mangled by Beyoncé, every eggnog-infused martini, every promise of no money down and no payments for the first seventeen months, every drug-addled midnight greeter at Walmart scratching his most recent tattoo, every ill-considered fax at every office party, and every other cliché of Christmas cacophony and tintinnabulation comes the rising tide of truly ho-ho-horrible inevitability – the hopes, the joys, the fears of all the years, reindeer and pain dear – that Grinch-ish thief of all that is merry; expectations.

As you would imagine, the management of HealthyPlace rewards me handsomely for penning Funny In The Head which weekly tickles America and beyond with a droll mélange of insouciance, absurdity, and je ne sais quoi, whatever that is. This lavish remuneration has enabled me to purchase a weekend house on the Cape, a weekend cape for wearing around the house, and a meticulously restored 1933 Hispano-Suiza J12 cabriolet. Well and good, you say, but man cannot survive exclusively on dessert! Your point is well made. Despite the almost embarrassing tsunami of wealth bestowed by the Internet’s leading, (and most decorated), mental health website, I must, on occasion, venture out into what I shall refer to as – the valley of the shadow of K-Mart - in order to supplement my income and pay for the mundane necessities of life such as spats, plimsolls, and Fred Astaire biographies. Like so many writers before me, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Dylan Thomas, and Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry, to name just the most universally familiar, I take to the lecture circuit where I beat my gums, and remaining teeth, in hopes of drumming up revenue.

For many of us who every morning strap on the old miner’s helmet and begin yet again the long descent into territories ruled by unseen dictators; who boldly confront the limitations and restrictions thrust down upon us like leaden capes by inexplicable, cruel fates; who summon the courage to confront yet another day replete with overwhelming obstacles and dark mysteries, who – Columbus-like – sail into an unknown sea teeming with tiny monsters both real and imagined – indeed, for all of us and others as well, Thanksgiving is a very special occasion indeed; or, more properly put, Thanksgiving is like a corpulent nightmare of wretched excess, unrealistic expectations, and unfair demands, served up dressed in bitter herbs on a harrowing stroll down memory lane where one is reminded of experiences one spends the rest of the year trying to forget. Or not. But these weepy reminders of what is so frequently the case overlook a social quagmire even more desolate than having to face one’s family on Thanksgiving, that is, having nowhere to go on Thanksgiving.

Those of us who labor in the heavily intoxicated vineyards of mental illness, mental health, and recovery – those of us who gaze in wonder at the never-ending inventiveness demonstrated by tormented souls scouring the landscape for new mechanisms of self-injury – those of us who chase the lighthouse beacon of serenity as we pitch and toss on a cultural sea of hazards, pitfalls, and demons – those of us who marvel at a world gone mad, a world intent on sabotaging health, moderation, and self-care at every step – those of us who, wracked by ADHD and overburdened by flashy, empty distractions – are united by one profound bit of good news – this sentence is about to come to an end.

For those of us who struggle with mental illness it is important to remember that even the darkest night is followed by the warmth of day; in other words, all things, even the most wretched things, end. Let’s consider this for a moment. The Dark Ages ended, heck, even the Middle Ages ended – as a matter of fact I think mine ended about 15 minutes ago, making way for the onslaught of decrepitude referred to collectively as Old Age. The careers of Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lewis and even The Three Stooges all came to a close; so remember, never abandon hope. Nightmares do end.