The Brink..?

Sometimes I think I'm right on the narrow cliff-edge of madness.

Oooh, heavy subject matter!  Still.  Sometimes I do wonder, somewhat, if I could just take a step sideways and end up in someone's fevered dream-world - maybe mine, maybe someone else's.

And before I go on I'm not trying to insult anyone or downplay the tragedy of people who suffer some kind of mental illness (a category I fit into currently).  I'm just rambling.

Thoughts, tumbling out too fast, too rich, too pure, like vomiting up the flesh of angels into a bowl made of dreams.

Mmm.  Bowl.

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Some of you will know that I write - quite a bit - as a... hobby, I suppose.  I'm also a gamer.  Logical congruence: writing my own roleplaying game/s.

Problem: maybe I'm a bit... not right in the head.

Of course that might not be a problem.  I can feel my thoughts getting scattered so let me elaborate before I get too jittery from the fire in my head.

Sometimes the sensation of one of the muscles in my right hand relaxing after I've clenched it utterly entrances me.  Occasionally I find myself listening to music that makes me feel manic, wired.  Now and then I can barely sit still from the energy flowing through me, from the need to be up, moving, doing, creating, being, feeling.

I have cyclothymia.  Logic tells me I'm not crazy, I'm just ever so slightly manic, and that amuses me that my head puts two seemingly contradictory words like 'slightly' and 'manic' next to one another without a second's hesitation.

Sometimes I feel like there's a little part of my soul that never.

Stops.

Screaming.

Mania doesn't need to be light and happy.  It can be panicked and dark.  Sometimes it's both; nothing quite like a manic mind for defeating all concepts of what is or isn't mutually exclusive.  I can see-saw from flying high to diving deep, in this sort of mind-frame, in a moment.  Sometimes I'm (somehow) manically neutral.  Crazed and calm.  It's an odd sensation.

But have you ever felt that the only thing that separates you from a slobbering delusional bag of flesh in a padded room wearing a jumper with very long sleeves is the simple fact that you choose not to go mad?


Is sanity a choice?  Can insanity be a matter of personal identity?  It seems it, now and then, when those tiny urges and needs to simply act and feel like you're alive completely bypass your brain and seize your nervous system.

Or, alternatively, if you're talking to someone who seems to primarily be disturbed because they like it.

I haven't been, if you're interested.  But I've met a lot of interesting people in my time.