No, seriously, my mind is buzzing along a million miles an hour. I’m about an inch away from bouncing off the walls, yet it’s exciting and it feels good.
Mania. It’s the greatest fucking thing ever created.
Right up until it takes that downward turn and I start questioning everything I’ve ever done or ever said and I completely go off the rails. All these things I do so joyfully now, the words I scream out to the Internet and the things that I do and buy in real life … They always come back to haunt me later.
I promise things that bring me difficulty. I feel things like floating acid tripping butterflies. And at the end of the day, I have a great time either ruining or living my life.
It always feels the same either way.
Waking up with that sense that I’ve done wrong and not quite sure where I’ve misplaced my step. It sucks. I hate it. There’s nothing I can do to change it.
You don’t know what it’s like to need help so bad, but to not be able to say the words to anyone. There’s so much shame involved with any kind of mental illness. Even just using the words … mental illness … it makes my stomach crumble into knots.
There’s some days when I wake up hating everyone and everything, but when it comes down to it, it’s me that I hate. Because everything about the world I see, that’s my perception of things, the way that my brain puts it together. I am decoding messages that only I receive.
Everyone literally walks around in their own world, because each person has their own way of seeing things. So when I can look at something and all I feel is distaste, that’s my perception of things.
My idea of beauty is different and unique, as is my sense of disgust. And it all rides on what I feel at a particular time and place, the way my brain chemistry has decided to turn things. So sometimes there’s regret for the things I’ve said and didn’t say, the things I did and didn’t do, but always I’m left to deal with the consequences.
Mental illness is like being drunk all the time. Once the mood shifts, there’s nothing to block it or slow it down. When I’m angry, I’m angry. When I’m sad, I’m sad. And when I’m happy, I’m happy right up until the point I get terrified and end up hiding in the closet because everyone is out to get me.
And I write about it, and I write about it, and oh yeah, I write about it.
Even my characters that are like gods walking on Earth have problems with the way they see things or the way they react to a given situation. Or someone gets slipped some creepy drug, and having their perception of reality violently changed sends them on a bad trip. I have never written a character that is completely well-adjusted or happy in life.
Because I don’t think that perfect happiness exists. How boring would that have to be? It’s like the Matrix. When it was perfect, the human brain rejected it for a lie.
So I think the whole of humanity is a little bit crazy. It shouldn’t be something that we’re ashamed of, though it doesn’t need to be yelled from the mountain tops. It’s just a bit of mixed up chemistry.
If diet, exercise, music, and routine behavior can adjust someone’s brain to put them in a better mood and a better working order … Then it’s not something people should be stigmatized for and everyone should know that.
There’s no reason to hide away from the world, and no reason for the world to turn on someone. Mental illness is something that can easily be handled with compassion and self-knowledge.
Because knowledge is half the battle.
