It’s so tough to be bipolar. It’s harder than any war I fought or any battle I won. The highs and lows are more than you could even imagine. It’s as if your life is a roller coaster and everyday is a hill. One minute on top of the World admiring the view but the next the depths of depression; just waiting for that inevitable climb back up. But this ride never ends. It just goes on and on.

It’s amazing to me; I’m surrounded by happiness and what should make a person’s life fulfilled; a loving family, amazing children, incredible friends. But none of that makes a difference. One day I feel as if I’m finally on the path towards happiness. Then my brain switches, and I’m drowning in a sea of despair and unhappiness. And I think to myself – God please just let the ride end. There’s no worse torture than knowing and seeing what you want in your moments of sanity, but being unable to grab them.

It’s a vicious cycle fueled by self-medication, prescription drugs and my own mind. But I just can’t get hold of it. The mind is so powerful. I’ll make awful decisions; lose loved ones, damage relationships, damn near lose myself. But like a song on repeat the cycle continues. I want to stop it…but I can’t.

And here I am again today; after a day of bliss – of mania as a Psychiatrist would tell you – back on the low end of the spectrum. Wondering why I’m here, what my purpose is. It’d be so easy to disappear into nothingness. Life would be so much easier that way. But I can’t bring the shame of that unanswerable question upon my children and my friends. I can’t leave them asking why.

So I sit…a prisoner of my own mind: one day alive and moving 100 miles per hour, the next a recluse hardly willing to leave the bed. I don’t expect anyone to understand it. But it’s who I am. It’s the life I was born into. And one day I fear it will take me into a blackness that never ends.

It’s taken me 31 years, 3 months, 25 days and a few hours to finally decide I’m ready. I’ve had all I can stand of the wild parties, keg beer from trash cans, immature relationships, living paycheck to paycheck, having a job and not a career and just general tomfoolery that accompanies not being an adult. I’m ready to take the plunge and trade in my rock t-shirts for button downs and my Doc Martin’s for loafers.

In all honestly I should have made the change a long time ago. It’s not like I didn’t pay a price for this lifestyle. In my wake are failed marriages, ruined friendships, money problems, and God only knows how many dead brain cells. I just don’t want to do it anymore. Something in me clicked and I don’t want to be that person any longer.

Maybe it was watching my father nearly lose his life to heart problems. That was a sobering reality check for me. It certainly made me realize that I wasn’t as invincible as I thought. That in any given moment I could be gone. And there are a lot of things and experiences – adult experiences – I still want to have.

Perhaps it’s from being a father myself. Nearly losing my own dad has made me want to be an even better father for my own two children. Not the person I was; not the man who ran their mother off and lost himself in gallon after gallon of alcohol and bottle after bottle of pills.

Maybe I’m just now getting past many of the issues that held me back; an inability to let go, a penchant for living in the past, a silver tongue and quick wits that allowed me to bullshit my way through life.

However it happened, all I see now is future. The slate has been wiped clean and the World is my oyster. The question is what do I want to do with it? I want to rebuild my life back. Have a family, a successful career; be the kind of man and father that my father was. If I can be half the man he is and positively impact half as many people, I will have done something amazing with my time here.

My life is basically made up of three major sections; the professional, the personal and the spiritual. They aren’t always working together or even in equal thirds. To be honest I’m not sure I’ll ever get them balanced out effectively. Circumstances like time,distance and myriad other factors always seem to work against me. If you’re asking why that matters I’ll tell you. I think this ‘Trifecta’ is what we have to master and balance in order to truly be happy in life.

I feel like I have finally turned a corner in my personal life. I’ve met an awesome woman I have a ton of interest in. Surprisingly that feeling is being reciprocated. It’s taken me forever to feel like I want to try and even entertain the idea of a dating again. But for some reason it just feels right. And I know it’s okay to roll with this feeling. So the balance has switched towards the personal and I’m stoked about how things are going.

But professionally I feel more and more disillusioned with every passing minute. Every day I feel less like I’m in the right place. I suppose that was always a possibility with learning a new career, especially now that I’m getting more into the heart and soul of medicine. It’s one thing to see it on television. As I learned this week it’s entirely different to be there in person. So while I take two steps forward personally, I feel like I’m taking one back professionally.

Maybe the key to figuring all this out lies in the corner of the triangle I pay the least amount of attention to. I know religion and spirituality are incredibly important in life. Oddly I find it’s also the easiest part of my life to blow off. There’s always an excuse for missing church, or not meditating, or whatever the case may be. Maybe spirituality is the Rosetta Stone for finding contentment in those other areas of your life. Perhaps my focus has been wrong all along. If I put my faith at the forefront maybe things will automatically balance themselves out. I hope so. I’m tired of feeling like my life is a game of Marble Madness, constantly tilting and shifting. I’m ready to beat that game for good.

If you have found that balance in your life I’d love to hear from you. Let me know about your Rosetta Stone or experiences. I always learn so much from the comments, email and responses I receive. As always, thanks for dropping by. Be real, be true and be good.

Fall is breathtaking. Watching the changing colors of the leaves and getting that first chill from the Autumn air, seeing your breath as you exhale – it’s almost like the weather is mimicking life.

I watch my children play in the falling leaves amidst the yellows, reds, browns and greens of autumn – the smiles on their faces – and I am reminded that everything is changing every day, all around us. What seems like an eternity away, will one day soon be just another fall afternoon filled with the smell of burning leaves, littered with pumpkins on doorsteps and Friday night high-school football games wrapped in blankets, sipping hot chocolate. And one day, much too soon, my kids won’t be playing in those leaves anymore. It will be their children.

As I sneak up upon my 30^th birthday, I realize more clearly that it all goes by so fast. From watching the World Series with my dad when I was a little boy, to Halloween with friends in Germany to now seeing my own kids enjoy the mild temperatures – it’s as if I just woke up from a long slumber. What once were such clear moments in my mind have faded like old photographs. So many times I thought tomorrow would never come, or I couldn’t survive a crisis in my life. But the moments always passed, the sun always rose and another fall has always dawned on me.

I feel more and more like one of those beautiful leaves slowly making it’s descent towards the ground. It starts with a bud that then blossoms into a leaf due to nurturing and growth. It survives the storms and rains and winds all the while getting older. Then, when it is time, it falls gracefully towards the Earth, landing wherever the winds of change see fit. And then, before you realize it – Spring has sprung and the process starts all over again, and hopefully we have learned something about ourselves and our world that will help us enjoy the next Fall that much more.

One day in a future that will be here before I know it, I will sit in front of a fireplace, with my children and grandchildren, and think back on all these Autumn days – the days when I turned 10, 16, 20, 30 and I will tell the stories of my tree – the branches that were the decisions I made and the leaves I have shed. And when I am old and gray, and all the leaves have fallen, my time here will be up. And then I can lie down and dream – of all those Autumn afternoons and the smiling faces of my children, rolling in those yellow, red, brown and green leaves.

“My toughest fight was with my first wife.” – Muhammed Ali

It's not about fists: it's about heart.

I have gone and started on a quest that I have dreamed about since I was a little boy. I have taken up boxing as my one – and only – hobby.
I have become enamored with the sport. Pugilism – the art of fighting with the fists – is something I sat in my room and dreamed of doing when I was a little boy. Watching Mike Tyson tear through opponents in seconds, I always had the desire to fight. And like most Alabama boys I had my fair share of disagreements that were best solved via fisticuffs. But this journey I have embarked on – this is completely different.

Boxing, as I am learning, is not about the other person in the ring. It’s not a battle with an opponent. It is a battle within you. It is your mind telling you to stop – you are tired, weak, beaten. It is that battle you must conquer. It’s all about overcoming your own demons, problems and constraints to get to a place where you perform at your highest level. The training is absolute hell – it is all about enduring pain and winning that battle in your mind. It is everything I ever wanted and needed.

It allows me to escape my world – to go into a side of myself I never knew existed – to gaze into a part of Russell I have never seen before. Nothing worthwhile ever comes without hardship and pain. That is the story of my life. I love what Ali said in that quote. No fight can be worse than that with a loved one – a fight as your go through the demise of a relationship or stand among the crumbled ruins of what once was or could have been. It took pain and hardship – the kind of fights Ali talked about – to get me here. As odd as it sounds, I am thankful for that. Now that I am here, by comparison, fighting and life seem easier.

But through this art of fighting – this combat sport, I am learning that all those arguments and problems – whether it was a in a relationship, at a job or with my family – were never truly with another person – they were with myself. I now see that – and I am fixing the broken parts every time I step in that gym. It might not be for everyone – getting punched in the guts and face over and over – but for me it is The Greatest Battle. It is the fight for my life, my soul and the chance to forgive myself. Beating the hell out of someone may sound therapeutic– maybe relieve some pent-up frustrations – but it is the getting there that is saving me, one punch at a time.