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Imagine, if you can: Sitting alone in the quiet of your own home when suddenly there is a rise of voices. Muffled conversations surround your senses. Ghosts? Aliens? Electronic interference with your smart speaker? As you move from room to room you find that the voices do not get louder. They do not get clearer. They follow the same patterns, rhythms, volumes. The fear begins to mount. Who the hell is it? Why am I hearing this? Why can’t I seem to make out what they are saying? God damn what is wrong with me?
Imagine, if you can: Being out at your favorite bar. You are sitting alone having a great whiskey sour. Casually you look up from your table, and all the eyes at the high bar are on you. Is it your hair? Did you spill your drink? Look down. Drink is still in the cup. Wipe your mouth and graze your nose just in case. Take a sip. Look away from the bar. Look at the family tables. That kid is pointing at you and saying something to their mom about you. Is your fly unzipped? Don’t reach down there, people will think you are doing something all kinds of weird. Slam your drink, leave a massive tip and get the fuck out.
Imagine, if you can: Hiding in the bathroom. The voices of your kids laughing are screaming in your ears. The sound of joy is a sound of deafening sorrow. Your own kids’ voices are a pounding battle drum that just gets louder and louder. You are shaking, cold, and the minutes tick away like days spent lost at sea. When does your wife get home? What the hell is this all over the bathroom floor? How much longer can the dishes go without being washed? There’s to do, yet you are frozen there on the floor like the overflow of water from the ice cube tray to the freezer shelf. Get it together you pathetic fuck.
Can you imagine it? Can you?
This is mania.
This is mental illness at its most beastly. This is my daily life.
I have battled with mental illness for 20+ years now, starting all the way back in middle school. I’ve been through it all. Cutting, suicidal thoughts and actions, hospitalizations, medications, and counselors. As I have gotten older, I have had many different changes with how my mental health affects me, and how I respond. Most recently, I started experiencing newer, more frightening symptoms. Extreme paranoia, hearing voices and sounds, seeing things that aren’t there, and social anxiety at an all-time high. A new diagnoses and treatment plan.
Imagine going to your favorite hangout and feeling so overwhelmed, so freaked out by absolutely jack shit, and leaving without saying goodbye to anyone. Imagine being at work, with your headphones in, rocking away at your tasks, and hearing sirens. You’re inside of a building that blocks most outside noise, in a 3-wall desk/cubicle, and punk rock blaring. Look outside. No cops. Nobody is shooting up the place. Nothing is burning. Nobody is having a heart attack in the parking lot. Pause your music. No, this is punk rock, they don’t put random sirens in the music.
Medication changes make you feel like shit some days, and other days you’re on top of the world. Sleep is either just right or not enough. Even 10 hours later. You’re not sure if you want anyone to know what’s going on or if you want everyone to know. I don’t know if I’m paranoid, medicated, shit faced, or if this is what normal feels like. I don’t know exactly who I am because I know I’m not me when I’m not me, but I’m not sure I’m me when I am me.
My head hangs on by a thread like a Prince Rupert’s drop suspended by its tail. Strong enough to take a bullet. Fragile enough to shatter to pieces with a gentle breeze. My mania is my reality. Soft as an angel whisper, fierce as a lion’s mighty roar. Do I want to type this? Should I admit that I’m not okay and I have no clue when I will be? What do my peers think? Fuck it. What does my family think? What does the world see?
I know what I see. Ugliness, sorrow and rage. I look in the mirror and I see a monster. A bastard child of desire and despair. A familiar stranger staring back with empty eyes. The hollowness of nothingness screaming from his lips like someone fighting against the chains drowning them in the depths of an ocean. Metaphoric right? I could go on and on, but let’s wrap it up, shall we?
Imagine, if you can: Writing an entire blog post and not remembering half of the shit you wrote because you are too distracted by the non-existent sounds around you. Imagine, if you can: Mania so deep, that real is down, manic is right, and you aren’t sure who you are, when you are, or if you will be.
Or
In the words of Mark Vonnegut:
“ Knowing that you’re crazy doesn’t make the crazy things stop happening.”
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