Vignettes Of Mania
Trigger Warning: Suicidal Ideation/Behavior, Unreality, Detailed Descriptions of Psychiatric Experiences, Substance Use References
Age 13: You’ve only slept about 7 hours in the past 3 days, but that’s Okay. You feel fine, light as a feather, Elated. Life is Beautiful. You’re Healing. Yes, things are Getting Better. The light shining in from the hallway windows glitters and dances around you, and golden sparkles dance from your finger tips and feet as you make your way through the corridor. Yes, things really are Getting Better, I really am feeling Better. Suddenly, a harsh voice breaks your trance. What are you doing still in the Hallway, class has started?! A teacher calls out to you. You are brought closer to reality for a second and the realization that you are late for class (yet again) sinks in, along with a sharp pang of shame & dread. You stammer to the teacher something about getting distracted but she just encourages you to get a move on. Yes Ma’am! You take off skipping to class, sparks coming out of the floor with your every step.
Age 15: You have your Foster Parents’ basement to yourself—everyone else’s bedrooms are on the 2nd floor—and you’re very grateful for that right now. It’s been a long, Traumatizing year, and you’ve reached the breaking point. You thought one of your guy friends liked you back, but you were wrong. You feel humiliated & ashamed of yourself, and Delusional Obsession prevents you from thinking about nearly anything else. You spend countless hours each night running in circles in the main basement area and cycling on your Foster mother’s stationary bike, many nights getting less than 4 hours of sleep. You rip apart your sketch books and magazines to cover your bedroom walls, convinced Something is watching you through them. You even throw your laptop down the carpeted basement stairs in an episode of Agitated Despair. You are Anxious and Irritated and Energized and Hopeless and Angry and Exhausted and Hyper all at once. Reality seems to swirl around you and your thoughts seem to Stop & Jump at their own will. It’s too much, it’s been too much for too long…
Age 19: That night in October wasn’t a “Psychotic Episode”, it was Pandora’s Box. Ever since that barrier broke, your world has been tumultuous, a variegated tempest. For a period your world will be overshadowed by an inky murk, then punctuated by white-hot electrified bolts of energy and agitation. Endogenous Intoxication easily overcomes, gold and sanguine swirls as you get lost in the Netherworld. Nothing is certain, nothing is stable. “Mixed States”, “Rapid-Cycling”—it’s nice to have words for this, but the comfort they provide is superficial. You are in a world of your own, and no one around is able to comprehend even the smallest aspects of it, from the Voices to elysian inebriation of the first few days of the Manic episodes. The lack of understanding pushes you further away from the people around you and further into the arms of Suicidal Ideation.
Age 21: You wake Up, you go to bed. From first second conscious to last they are there, The Angels. It’s been a few weeks now, and the constant Gregorian chant is wearing further into your sanity. You feel drunk, buzzed, dizzy—constantly. You escaped chronic Dissociation only to end up in an oxymoronic Manic Stupor. The Hallucinations create such Sensory Overload that it’s hard to do much else, and the feeling of intoxication makes you uncoordinated. One day, you’re sitting at the dining room table, still in your night gown. The Angels’ Voices grow louder and louder—they are all you can hear. They send you a message: Follow Us! With shaky limbs, you follow a light and walk out the front door, up the yard… And straight towards busy DC traffic at the end of Rush Hours. Your trance is only broken by your father screaming your name from the front porch, stopping you just in the nick of time to prevent you from walking into the street.
It’s been several years since I experienced a Major Mood Episode; my diagnosis was originally Schizoaffective Bipolar 1 type, and has since been changed to Schizophrenia for remission of the Bipolar 1 symptoms. It’s difficult to track when exactly my Mood Symptoms started. I have definitely shown symptoms of Schizophrenia my whole life, and I definitely had Mood Symptoms by age 12, but my memory is very patchy between the ages of 7-11, so it’s hard to say if I had any before then. I think it’s most accurate to say the Schizophrenia came first and I developed Bipolar Symptoms going into puberty. My Bipolar 1 recovery closely followed my Dissociative Identity Disorder recovery, and this is one reason I think that my Mood Symptoms were related to my Childhood Trauma rather than being truly endogenous like I believe my Schizophrenia is.
Like the most severe period of my Psychosis—to which my Mania is inexorably entwined— I do feel a sense of Nostalgia when I look at my Mania/Mixed Episodes. When I look at my Mania around the age of 13, there was a special girlish innocence to it that later Psychoses did not have, and that a part of me misses. It was the last iteration of myself that wasn’t jaded (of course, that’s partially because of the Dissociation I was experiencing), and that was reflected in some of the Psychosis I experienced. I’ve never been a major substance user, but sometimes I crave the intoxication that heavy Mania & the co-occurring Psychosis brings. The vibrancy of Mania before it begins to show its darker side can be incredible, but it’s still very dangerous. Choosing to maintain my Stabilization involves Self-Discipline, doing things I know will help me maintain my stability and not doing things I know might trigger a relapse of more severe Psychosis or possibly Mania. When the sirens call, tie yourself to the mast.
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