What It’s Like to Be Hypomanic

Like an olde tyme machine with different sized gears, all flying fast, barely staying in place, and the smokestack constantly whistling.

Like an electrical fire inside my skin.

Like a hyperactive toddler who really wants to play minigolf instead of doing the things that need to be done, who doesn’t care that it’s 97 degrees and humid as hairy armpits. Minigolf, minigolf!

I wish I could actually describe to you what being hypomanic is like. But it’s a state of consciousness, so unless you’ve experienced it, the best I can do is approximate it.

Alone, I switch gears fast and flap my hands. With safe people, I talk and talk and talk. Out and about I suck it in, keep a lid on it, smile too much, am extroverted and quickly disengage because I don’t want to appear CRAZY IN PUBLIC. I’m exhausted and exhausting to be around.

I am in treatment. I am doing all the things I’m supposed to be doing. All of them. Still, I am hypomanic as balls right now, as very hypomanic balls.

I am also on Xanax, which is supposed to help, but which feels like putting an angry racoon in a sleeping bag.

The saving grace about rapid cycling: maybe tomorrow it will be different.

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