Manic Depression

Happy again! I'm beginning to think that I'm suffering from some sort of stress-induced Manic Depression. Mania is great - child's-eye vision, bright colours leap from every corner, each minute detail, normally disregarded as insignificant, is revelled in, then catalogued, in order that I may put it in its place once I have the rest of my master plan. Walking past a book-shop, reading the titles of every book simultaneously. Past a bus-queue - every person's face unfolds to display each wrinkle and explain its meaning. And never having to touch the ground when I walk - never having to do anything, but doing it anyway for the sheer pleasure of the experience. And then the other side. Depression. It's now been banished to the furthest extremities of my body, but I can feel it waiting, trying to claw its way back to my heart. And bodily location is important; I had always thought heart-ache to be the most inaccurate of metaphors - a fanciful diagnosis made by some mediaeval physician. But when the feeling comes, I feel my heart attempting to free itself of the restrictions imposed by my body. At the worst moments, it pushes alien like, just off-centre of my chest, and everything strains to cope with the additional pressure. Then, when I'm worn out with crying, it dies down to leave a heavy residue, centred on my torso but delivered throughout my body. The only word for this feeling is 'dull'. It is a dull pain, quite bearable in itself if it were not there only to serve as a reminder of far worse, mental anguish. But the dullness has a secondary effect on all activity - movement is slowed to a shuffle, senses are obscured by intangible clouds of interference. Above all, nothing is possible - senses, consolidation, motivation, each stage throws up further barriers to the desire and ability to act. Riding on the peaks and troughs of mood-swings which affect us all, but this time the contrast is sharper. In my mind appears an image which I have never seen but which still haunts me - Janet sprawled on the patio three floors below her bedroom - her foot laying some distance from the mass of her body adds an element of grim humour. Not the smiling, over-excited Janet, a 50-year old school girl inviting you to her party, but a different, sad creature who would spend days, maybe weeks, hidden in her room, terrified lest events in the outside world, which she had put every effort into excluding, suddenly required that she make an appearance - what will they think if they see me in this state. Why should I have to hide my excessive sorrow for their sakes. Well, I'll allow them one last chance to stare, but this time I will wear my expression for all to see, and they can stare all they like when I'm not there to stare back out at them. Note: Janet was a manic-depressive who lived in the next-door house when I was a student in Bristol. For most of the time my contact with her was limited - a smiling avoidance, attempting to ignore her strange behavior. When she called round to invite all and sundry to her 50th birthday party it was a shock. She led us to a small room, where a few embarrased people stood, relatives trying to distance themselves and people who hadn't had the heart to withhold their friendship. In the centre of this stifled emotion, Janet and her 'boyfriend' were exuberant hosts, revelling in the party atmosphere. It was a few months after this that I was told of her grisly death - the landlord had previously warned us that the 'harmless nutter' next door had thrown herself out of the window a couple of times, but it seemed that the third time was, for her, the lucky one.