This blog was going to be titled Flatland because that’s how I describe the new mental state I’ve fallen into the past several weeks. However, “Flatland” is already copyrighted. Before I can delve into what this means and why you would be the least bit interested, I need to provide some textual background, going all the way back to the beginning. As soon as I learned how to speak, my immediate housemates started telling me to stop talking. The two people who remember me from High School swear I was a quiet and thoughtful young woman. They say I seldom spoke but when I did I uttered wise things. When you survive into your seventies, memories tend to become delusional, I mean mellowed. Yet this is what they claim and it’s so complimentary I’ll pretend they are correct. By now you probably know I’m surviving on prescription medications because of something called general anxiety disorder. I can leave the house but every once in a while if you drop a pin all you’ll be able to see of me is the dust kicked up by my flight path. Have I mentioned that I may be also be on the bi-polar spectrum? My sister-in-law says I am. She says I’ve always been that way. She should know. When I used to soar into what I then referred to as enthusiasm, she’s the one I used to yell “BAM!” to on the phone. The more she’d tell me to stop, the more I’d do it. “BAM!” (Emeril Lagasse was not the first to use that palm-slamming phrase to get peoples’ attention. You should try it sometime just for fun, but not with the elderly or the delicately balanced. BAM!) Because I lived with someone officially diagnosed as bi-polar and watched the poor dear have to go to bed and pull the covers over his head for at least three days a month, I was convinced I definitely did not suffer from depression. A little mania, fine, but depression? No. However, antidepressants are used to treat anxiety, so after being persuaded to test five or six of them that nearly killed me, I landed on one I seem to tolerate. Then came a Christmas and a New Years and the following January I was stunned by the realization I had survived both holidays without ever once feeling sad. This was truly a shock because I’d never known I was sad. A self-pitying martyr? Absolutely. That was my game and I was the quarterback. Half a lifetime of trying to turn off the martyr faucet had met with only periodic success. Then came the lightening bolt—total, complete absence of sadness. What was happening? Where did the martyr go? Try as I may, I couldn’t dredge up a single sad sigh. Not one. I couldn’t even remember what it felt like. It was totally bizarre. That’s when I considered there may be various forms of depression and not all of them involve 72 hours of round-the-clock sleep. Maybe my sister-in-law was onto something. Okay, so now I wasn’t sad anymore. But the manic part? That stayed alive and well. My meds fixed bottoming out, but they did nothing to prevent skyrocketing. It was great. Suddenly, you couldn’t shut me up. I’d found my voice and was having a blast interrupting people as often as they’d interrupted me. Not only that, I was funny. At least I thought I was funny. I thought I was hysterical. I have to confess, in the beginning I was a little self-conscious about it. I knew I was on an uphill spike with no brakes. I’d clutch people’s arms and beg, “For the love of God, make me stop talking!” Then I’d burst out laughing and launch into another story. Of course, I’m exaggerating a tad or a lot, depending upon who’s reading this. I’m still perfectly capable of calmly, carefully listening to you for about 25 minutes before I start talking about myself. There are people who still mistakenly think I’m a quiet personality. Silly people. It’s just that this new freedom has been so liberating, so intoxicating, I didn’t want it to be like Mars and go into retrograde. I needn’t have been concerned. The magnitude of my transformation was brought home recently when I attended a gathering of former dance buddies I hadn’t seen in at least ten years, not since my escape from fear. “What’s happened to you?” I was asked by more than one male person. “You never used to be so like this,” they uttered in guarded suspicion. I grinned and replied, “Yeah, yeah, I know. You want to hear my views on Gandhi?” So there I was, up until last month, living the life of not-sad one day and a fountain of babbling sociability the next day. The depth of this new depravity was born home when I was frothing at the mouth to my sister-in-law, in my own living room, sitting on my own couch, when I leaned forward and asked her with sudden concern, “Have I outstayed my welcome?” After that, we laughed so hard she got asthma and had to leave. Then something strange happened. Maybe I got tired. I had been enjoying weeks of celebrating my birthday here and there. Every day was a new escape into the land of human interaction. There was no time to write, to sew, to read. I was the party girl. And then I wasn’t. That was okay. I expected a few empty nest emotions after such festivities; un petit morceau of loneliness was the downside of the upside. What I didn’t expect was to feel so …so … comfortably indifferent. I was too tired to want to leave the house but perfectly happy to venture outside if the opportunity presented itself. Gradually I began to notice the most extraordinary state of mind descending upon me. The mania had evaporated, the sad was long vanished, and in their places lived a freakishly detached and peaceful contentment. I had no other way to describe it other than to say I felt “flat.” I existed somewhere between high and low gear in the land of neutral. Stay home? Fine. Go out? Also fine. Go to class? Sure. Skip it? No problem. Be annoyed? What’s the point? Solve a problem? Nah, they’ll figure it out. Rush to get a ticket before the dance is sold out? Nope, not in the mood for a hoop skirt. I’ll go next year. Maybe. Try as I may to work up some concern about this alternate universe, I was too mellow to do anything but notice the change. Once again, I turned to my SIL for guidance. “I’ve been in a flat state lately.” “What do you mean flat?” “The mania is gone. Nothing excites me but it’s not a problem.” “For example…?” “Yesterday I tried being annoyed but it wasn’t worth the effort so I stopped. Just like that. And the committee in my head has shut up. There’s no up; there’s no down; it’s just flat.” “That’s called normal.” “What? No. Really?” “Wait a few weeks. You’ll snap out of it.” It’s been two weeks. I’m still in it. Perhaps instead of Flatland I should be calling it winter. It could be by summer I’ll feel like talking someone’s ear off. Yesterday I had lunch with my daughter. I asked her. She knows everything. I figured she’d agree with Auntie and say, “Wait another two weeks. You’ll snap out of it.” I was stunned by her reply. “Maybe this is your new normal. It’s possible you’ve finally recovered enough for your meds to work as intended.” Huh. Never considered that. Wouldn’t it be awesome if it were true? I can’t give you the answer yet. For all I know, next month I could snap back to Point A the way my Spanx slip snapped back into a rubber band. Still, it’s been a really interesting experience. Picture a diagram of a sound wave with a horizontal line drawn through the central axis. That’ me, the horizontal line. I’m riding the train that runs through the middle of up and down. I kind of love it. It’s so … novel. So … flat.