Get Sleep, Don't Travel: A Manic Episode

It begins in a car with a bottle of Serroquel. It ends in a cheap hotel room with a volume of The Complete Works of Shakespeare and leftovers without any other medication. There's an empty bottle of Coors and an empty pill bottle. This is what they call mania. The lack of control of behavior or thought. This time it consists of a suicide attempt. The journey isn't pretty.

It starts off when I hear a voice telling me to quit my job. This is while driving an ambuelette for the company I work for. The job is easy but pays minimum wage. It leaves little time to enjoy the finer things in life. It should come as no surprise that I listen to the voice and quit my job. Money doesn't concern me at the moment because I've acquired a modest savings account that can support me until I start nursing school in August. That gives me a month to enjoy that which I've missed out on the last eight years out of high school. Only mania could drive me to think this way. I embrace it with arms wide open.

A week later I'm in a car heading to Chicago. I live in Toledo, Ohio. The drive takes four hours according to the GPS, but I'm travelling without directions. It's just me, the open road, and the trusting of road signs. I make it to Lafayette, Indiana by 3 pm. By 5 pm I'm lost in this town looking for Purdue University. There's a reason people use maps. Sometimes the signs don't lead to the right direction. But this is a lie. Sometimes mania leads me astray. It's hard to follow signs when I have no direction. Purpose is a useful compass that I currently lack. Frustrated, I find my way back to the expressway where the sign says Chicago. This I can trust.

Four hours later I hit the mark. It took only seven to get there. But Chicago is only an arbitrary destination. Once there I lose focus or purpose. What exactly did I come here to see? I told myself I'd be gone for a seven days. I can't imagine wasting two here. The voices agree. Let's get a hotel they tell me. Not a bad idea. I settle for a motel that cost $40 a night. Not bad.

I don't make it through the night.

First off, I decide that I'm going to talk to my lady friend that I believe is real. We're destined to meet. She talks to me through my mind. It's only a matter of time before she reveals herself in the flesh. I know because she told me so. Mania makes the illogical sound believable and reasoned. Never mind that the technology to talk through minds doesn't exist. Nor the ability to meet a random stranger through telepathy. She doesn't need the details. That would be logical.

I call her Stephanie. I'm too embarrassed to tell why. It involves a celebrity. My mania makes a storyteller blush. But that's just my way of coping with the destruction it brings. I find ways to make it humorous, adventure filed, and dangerously exotic. I've been to the edge, peered over it, and waved. I've come close to falling over it, but so far I've been lucky. This episode I'm dip my toes in the water below. A suicide attempt.

Stephanie convinced me to swallow half-a-month's supply of Serroquel. I drowned it with Coor's Light. The effects were immediate. I couldn't force myself to throw up. It felt like my brain was having seizures. I would freeze mid action. The worst was trying to walk. I would pause mid-step. So much for walking this out. Worse, I hadn't slept in three days. I got so tired I tried to fall asleep, but every time I felt a pinch in my mind. I'd see black and then feel my brain quiver. That was another seizure. This lasted 16 hours. It felt like forty. And then I passed out.

That's mania. The flip side was waking up and realizing I had wasted a thousand dollars over a two day spending  spree on food, clothes, gas, and a cheap motel. My vacation consisted of driving and OD'ing on medication. At least I made it to the art museum after I woke up. I called it a vacation and used the GPS to return home. It took four hours.

Coming down from the mountain is never fun. I go through a short period of loss of attention span. I'm restless. I can't sit still. I can't focus. Watching a  movie is like measuring eternity one second at a time. Time can be a form of torture when one is aware of it. When the conscious becomes a clock, the world becomes a barren wasteland. That's depression.

I call it manic depressive. Others call it bipolar. It holds some people hostage. Others say its exhiliarting. I find a way to make it a story. That's how I cope. I survive and live to tell it. Or as Lil' Wayne once said, "I tiptoe hell's boundary." My only advice I can give myself is to get sleep and never travel. I haven't had the chance to test these words out. I'll get back to you.