My psychiatrist told me today it appeared my medications were working, or at least beginning to work. My speech was less tangential, more direct, my posture more relaxed, my eyes not darting all around the room but focused on him. I was being a good boy.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wasn’t doing that well. Not until today. That only last night I had slept well, for the first night in a month, and today masturbated not forty minutes from showing up at his office. I’d worked out, too, for no more than twenty minutes, on a punching bag and showered for a half hour, hot water running over my scalp and face like a prolonged, sensuous baptism. That’s when I masturbated, for anyone wondering. I had also run into an old friend at a coffee shop, where I ordered a cinnamon bun and a small coffee. I treated myself because I had been paid the day before and because autumn sunshine had shone on my face when earlier I’d walked the dogs. They were being good dogs.

All this, these stars lined up, led to a fine time driving to my brand new psychiatrist, my medication manager, and a fine time sitting in his office going over bloodwork like old friends.

Could this be the medication? Not the stars? He thinks so, but I won’t really know because I never tell my doctors everything.

When I got home I rooted around my bathroom cabinets (my old house has many cabinets) for lamotrigine 300 timed release to ensure I didn’t need a refill. It’s the only drug I’ve been on a therapeutic dose of and my psychiatrist doesn’t want me to run out. I found it. I also found a few lapsed prescriptions from the last five years. Sertraline, Amitriptyline, Quetiapine. There have been others, too, names I can’t remember, their bottles tossed once they were finished. I should have kept them for posterity.

It’s common, I guess, when you’re bipolar and schizophrenic to be pinballed from medication to medication before landing on something that works. Then you’re kickballed in six months once what you’re on ceases to be sufficient and you suffer yet another break.

My last break I swore at work in front of about twenty people that I was going to quit my job immediately. Then I went back to work immediately, pretending I had said nothing. Neatly fuming while in the back of my mind formulating a plan. The plan didn’t grow much thanks to a thick brain fog from having broken. I landed somewhere between fuming a little and fuming some more. Then I took my lithium. For some reason, I’d packed a few capsules in the morning. Maybe I’d anticipated something. Maybe the break was the plan all along.

As with every break, I promised myself I’d never break again.

My wife was talking to me today about the AMRAPs she did in an exercise class. She kept saying the word like I knew what she was talking about.

The instructor had us doing so many AMRAPs today.

My arms are so sore from AMRAPs.

Those AMRAPs! Look, I can barely hold my fork.

Definitely barely.

Silence.

Melissa asked, she continued, what’s an AMRAP? Is that some sort of acronym?

I would ask that, too.

It’s As Many Reps As Possible.

A plural phrase spoken singular and/or plural. However you feel.

We did three AMRAPs.

You did one AMRAP.

I did three.

You can only do one AMRAP. If you can do more than one AMRAP, the first one’s not an AMRAP. Neither is the second.

Or third if I can do more tomorrow. Is that what you’re getting at?

Infinity plus one is?

I was pleased with myself. She went back to her farro and yoghurt with a shaky hand and didn’t say another word. Not that she was displeased or anything. She just wasn’t amused. It’s been happening more lately. It’s not her, it’s me. I’m getting old. That is, impossible to talk to for too long.

See above.

I’ve been sober almost five years and today in my bathroom, with all my old pill bottles, I felt like taking something to get me high. Quetiapine seemed like a ride. Quetiapine and a coffee in the afternoon? A narcotic-like spike for a few minutes followed by a lengthy nap? But I was afraid of the hangover. Everything gives me one anymore. Eggs, lettuce, brisket, ice cream, spoons and forks, B vitamins. Everything but lithium.

Yet another perk of living life with as many breaks as possible.

If you take a chance on a candidate like me, I won’t break again. I won’t let you down.

I promise,

Todd