Exploder

You may feel some withdrawal symptoms as you stop, don’t worry, it’s not you getting sick, it’s just the effects of not having the medication.

So here they are, some of the gifts of medication.
Almost losing track of how much I’m taking, we – the royal we, finally eliminate one.
Oh what fun.
The world spins and for a moment I can’t walk straight.
Nevermind, it’s time to drive a car.
Home, food, and the cinema with my father.
Some temporary relief from the dizziness.

Then a very sharp, very clear split.

On one side there is this muddled life of medication, therapy, the good intentions of others and the forgetfulness of the rest.
On the other, the silence of the abstract, reaching out for me. Beckoning me to leave this ecosystem of humanity in which I do not fit.
Here it comes with all the right arguments; what has this normality ever given you? Temporary love, half-hearted interaction. Here there is a world truly fitted to your perceptions, and I remember it. I remember the psychiatric centres, the hospitals, and I remember the horrified faces of the people who didn’t understand what was happening, and I find myself wanting that. Forget all of this money and expenditure and indulgence. I feel myself yearning for that true indulgence, to live in a world truly sideways, where communication and interaction is impossible.
See you’re isolated anyway, even if the hypomania isn’t there, you’re isolated from everyone else. They are normal people. They live normal lives. Leave them to their contrivances.

It’s not fear I feel, only a cold, very detached sense of observation. This I know is brought about by the drugs, keeping everything and everyone at bay. Leaving things just out of my reach and barricading me in, a prisoner of reality, a prisoner of normality. This is where I’m supposed to be, back in society, functioning, earning, interacting, but it’s only a half life.

That abstract, that beautifully dangerous place, I will always keep at my side. The truth is that it is this separated, fractured plane of existance that keeps me well, that balances the meds, and you, you will never see it.