Manic

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Manic It starts as white noise, a sort of rushing water sound in my ears. I shake my head, trying desperately to dislodge the upsetting sound but it stays stubbornly stuck. I can imagine the static that should accompany the sound and when I close my eyes I can see a blood red version of it clouding my mind's eye. My body shakes with a tremor. It's as if my very skin is trying to shake off the reality that threatens to engulf me. But I can't shake it off because it's the sea; it's a ocean. It's the biggest, deepest, darkest ocean ever imagined and I'm right in the middle of without a life-saver or buoy in sight. And I'm kicking and clawing against the tide but I can barely manage half a mouthful of fresh, lucid air. I'm being dragged down and there's no one there to save me. The white noise sucks me under as I struggle and gasp. I struggle because I don't know what's going to happen, and because I know exactly what will happen, because it's all happened before. The last lungful of clean, sane air leaves my lungs. Down I go. Under the cold, unforgiving waves of white noise, up from deep, dark depths of the ocean come The Voices. They're low and speak in a drawn out hiss. They whisper right into my ears, disembodied mouths with sharp teeth and forked tongues that lick me as they speak. “Stupid,” they tell me. “Stupid.” “Ugly.” “Worthless!” I toss my head, right, left, no, no. I don't want to hear it. Breathless and submerged, I still kicking for the surface. I can do this, I think. I'm not that far down. Kick! But the mouths have hands – cold, sharp hands – that grab me in vice grips. They don't pull me. The white-noise-water is so thick that I sink all on my own. But they keep me still, powerless. “Dumbass!” “Fucking worth... ... middle of paper ... ...m dragged up and up until I break the surface with a cry. I lie face down on my bed. The pillow under my head his damp and my head hurts and my face burns from the salt in my tears. Pushing myself up I looked around. There's no disembodied mouths, no terrible humanoid monsters. I'm in my room alone. In my panic I've trashed the place but it's nothing a good clean up can't fix. I feel empty. The catharsis is over and there is nothing left in me but a weak feeling of uneasiness. Manic hallucinations always leave me like this. Sluggish, I kick my way under the blankets and tuck myself in. I'll sleep for a while then clean up. At this point, I'm not sure whether to be happy or not. It's over and I don't run the risk of another episode for a few weeks but fact that it happened again fills me with dread and shame. “It wasn't real,” I mutter to myself. “It wasn't real.”

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