According to more statistics, or so I’m told, a lot of people define themselves through their manic states, or rather, what they’re able to do through their mania states. It’s very hard to blame them. It allows them to feel invincible. It gives them flashes of brilliance. They come up with ground-breaking epiphanies and become highly productive. And in a world where we tend to be defined by what we accomplish, it becomes who they are. Sometimes you’re just so happy and relieved that you’re not depressed, you think, this must be normal. It just has to be! This was certainly the case for me when I first experienced mania. I have generally come to define myself more through my lows. They’ve been a part of me for much longer, and I had constructed my identity during my adolescence around feeling like I didn’t belong, or I wasn’t good enough, and that people in the world, in general, were far too happy. This is how I latched onto music. It was lovely, and self-loathing. I could tell that certain writers, like me, saw the world very differently from the way it was often presented, or at least made rhymes to that effect. As magical as my manic epiphanies seem, I don’t need them. I am quite content with my regular, muted flashes of brilliance. I don’t need the debilitating consequences of manic ones.

On a scale from 1 to 10, 5 being ‘normal’, the period before I get really sick is like 7. It’s like being at a really great live concert. Everything’s loud and boisterous, and happening really quickly, but not quite out of control. Then all sorts of ideas keep coming. I struggle a little to catch up with myself. That would be 8. A manic episode is like 10. One doesn’t know how one managed to get from 8 to 10. It’s a leap over a very fine line. What happened to 9? I just find myself at 10, laughing my head off, everything immediately around me is fantastically lucid, but anything on the periphery and beyond fails to affect my self-contained existence. It’s like being on a rollercoaster, enjoying it for a while, but then realising that you’re afraid of heights and really want to get off and don’t know when it stops. 11 is when you can’t take it anymore. you’ve reach the end of your tether. You think, there can be no more suffering after this.