"There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you're high, its tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence and euphoria pervade one's marrow. But somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends' faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality."
"An Unquiet Mind" - Kay Redfield Jamison
"An Unquiet Mind" - Kay Redfield Jamison
Wow. I can only imagine what it must be like to experience such wild extremes as a norm. Sure, we've all had moments, I believe. But as a norm? That'd be scary, I'm afraid.
ReplyDeleteBut then again ... it would be constant proof of .... being. Wouldn't it?
There are far nicer, and easier, ways of being reminded that we are alive....
ReplyDelete