THE COLOUR OF MADNESS
A Blog About Living with Mental Illness
The Carnival in my Mind
Fast, furious, upside down and around in circles, it’s the ultimate adrenaline rush.
The whole time you violently zigzag around in your ill-fitting seatbelt, your insides are screaming to get outside, you desperately want to get off the ride that you just know is going to kill you but as soon as it stops, you realise that a miracle has occurred, you have in fact survived certain doom and you find yourself begging for more; we always want more.
My mind has been on a carnival ride for weeks.
I’m like a little kid at a fairground, I’ve been playing all day and it’s starting to get dark but I am surrounded by flashing lights, enticing music and exotic smells, the potential for fun is still slightly outweighing the fact that I don’t know where my Mummy & Daddy have gone.
By the time the evil clown shows its face I suddenly find myself well and truly lost, cold and alone in a dark and scary nightmare. You see, addiction isn’t always a substance, sometimes it’s a state of being.
Being elevated is addictive. I am told it is akin to the rush from cocaine, only it’s free, legal and for me, available right now. The difference is you don’t choose to pop a pill to become elevated, you can only choose to take a pill to no longer be elevated.
What goes up must indeed come down and like any drug there are consequences, the longer you are up and the higher your high, the lower your low will seem in comparison and your depression will tend to last longer too.
The cliff edge of hypomania can crumble without warning, you grab on and scramble back up over and over again deep down knowing that eventually your arms will tire from the weight of yourself and you will fall into the dark chasm below.
The depth of the chasm is unknown and that is the scariest part, I slipped off the top again yesterday and free fell for a while but managed to catch myself, I’m hanging on to the edge right now, trying to pull myself back up again but also trying to find the balance, I am not afraid of heights but I am so scared of falling.
When I am up, I see, hear, think and feel so. Much. More. Things seem comparatively dull right now. I put on my rose coloured glasses and watch the microns of energy flow in and out of the colourful world around them trying to re capture the feelings of euphoria and stay there for a while rather than climbing to high and slipping again, but my thoughts are racing on ahead of my emotions, they don’t care about feelings, they just want to run. Wild and free.
THE COLOUR OF MADNESS 