Tag: mania

A Hole in the Clouds

Photo by Roberto Nickson on Pexels.com

Out the window, the clouds move away after spilling the gentlest of rain on us. In the clouds, blue-purple and grey, the slightest glimpse of light spills through. This is my mood, perfectly. My life has been grey lately, neither full of exuberant life nor beset by torrents. One day follows another and I do the same thing day after day, more or less. This is not a bad thing.

I worry more about the exuberant than the torrential. I weather storms well and have done all my life. Bright sunshine has its own violence, smashing calm just as much as lightning does. Great happiness tempts its opposite more than great depression does.

I want a little light peeking through my clouds, a bubble of joy, not the torrent that tells me that life is out of control. Because the latter is mania, and it scares me more than depression.

Here’s for a calm day.

Lack of Sleep

Bad things happen when I get only three hours of sleep.

I view life looking through the telescope backward, and the world is a tiny pinpoint surrounded by black. My body feels like it is wavering in space, like heat shimmers on the road.  My brain gets overwhelmed by my ears ringing, and my emotions heat up for a confrontation.

That’s where I was yesterday, on a trip to Kansas City. I didn’t feel tired, or even exhausted — I simply didn’t feel anything inside my cocoon. My words were variations on “how dare you not see that we shouldn’t have come down here?”

Lack of sleep is a dangerous condition for me, because it kicks off hypomanic attacks, where I drag myself through life trying to accomplish everything, sleeping little while watching words and phrases put themselves together like train cars in a railyard. I will probably not be going there thanks to my medications and a twelve-hour nap last night. Still, I fear that place enough that I take care of myself and follow instructions.   

This morning feels better — I overslept for an extra hour and I still feel groggy, but it’s time for me to wake up and write.