The Best of the Manias

Posted on February 17, 2006 in Mania

Little did I know how much I would learn about how idiosyncratic mania can be. I’ve been compiling a list from the lists that people written. One does not arrive at a picture of the universal maniac. Instead, you see how intensely individual we are and creative.

• Believe that I can predict what everyone around me is going to say. Find out this is true. Being very terrified of the prospect that I am God. (me)
• Bitch about American politics and plot to become a Canadian citizen* (BP Queen)
• Cancel sleep for a week – who need’s that shit anyway? Might as well cancel food too, time is running out (Bipolar Guy)
• Catch a glimpse of the particular angle a fly on the wall is sitting at and know that this is God’s direct message that you’re finally fulfilling your designated duties (Bipolar Guy)
• Dance with my dog (JIL)
• Close your business for a week. These mere mortals haven’t a clue who they’re dealing with (Bipolar Guy)
• Consider becoming a Lesbian (BP Queen)
• Cook ALOT. I cook food for people who arent here to eat. I have been known to run around the neighborhood giving away homecooked food to people I hardly know (Raine)
• Engaging in unsafe behavior. Kind of goes with the whole impulse thing. For me, ‘unsafe’ is jogging at 3am in the ‘hood and stopping to chat with hoodrats at a gas station. This isn’t something that I normally do. Or ‘unsafe’ is clocking 90 mph to work just because I can. I normally drive like a short, old woman who can’t see the road. (Mrs. Moody)
• Feeling like I am going to rip right out of my skin and body. When it’s REALLY bad I actually leave my body and float off into some dream world. In this state I can barely carry on a conversation with anyone because I am so disassociated with my body that is buzzing like a chain saw. (James)
• Forgetting why I went to the kitchen. Walking back to the computer. Forgetting why I sat down in front of the computer. Remembering why I was in the kitchen. Going back to the kitchen…. (me)
• Hearing messages sent to me in the coded beeps and whines that come from the air around me (bp_hockey_chick)
• Hearing voices mumbling around me and sometimes hearing the demon voice in my head to do terrible things. Also being paranoid and feeling as though people are hiding all through out my house when I come home or even when I’m just sitting here on the couch. Feeling like they are hiding behind absurd places like behind the entertainment system or behind my paintings. (James)
• I’m prone to sliding between mania and mixed states like a figure skater transitioning from spins to jumps. (bp_hockey_chick)
• In a conversation i switch from one topic to another, completely unrelated topic–in the same breath (barb)
• Late-night needs, such as ordering bread sticks at 3:00am, or–be afraid, be very afraid–baking refrigerated cookies at 4:00am (barb)
• Leave a party because they’re drinking too much. Realize that I didn’t drive, then walk home rather than tell anyone I’m leaving. 11 miles away. In flip-flops. In the middle of the night. (Dreaming Mage)
• Make lists of bills to pay and calculate income for the next year or so andfigure it all out so I will have a savings account and be debt free in a matter of months. then I never look at it again. (Raine)
• Making impulsive decisions and not giving much thought to the consequences. Like when I married that stranger after ‘hanging out’ with him for five weeks. (Mrs. Moody)
• Moon people. (Kshippychic)
• Once put my kids in bed, then waited til they were asleep. they slept in bunkbeds. I decided they should have their own rooms do I cleaned out my room, dragged my full sized bed downstairs and gave it to the neighbors, rearranged my stuff in the linen closets, seperated the bunk beds with the kids still in them- ( it was the type where on slides sideways under the other) and put them in seperate rooms. They woke up the next morning with their rooms separated- furniture and all and they had never woken up (Raine)
• Open an account at a million different blog places (barb)
• See what I call LSD trailers, colored little outlines on stuff (JIL)
• Say fuck alot. (Kshippychic)
• Send 36 messages, which are really 12 messages broken into 3 pieces as I think of them, chat on Messenger, watch TV, and research the history of TNT and dynamite because I just realized they weren’t the same thing. (Dreaming Mage)
• Spend an entire night hauling beer bottles to a hole in the woods, and counting them as I go. (Dreaming Mage)
• The same thought or word echoes in my head over and over and over and over and over (bp_hockey_chick)
• Think I must be a damn genius since I know every mathematical equation to everything in the entire world (JIL)
• Thoughts that race and will not shut up. It’s like hearing your own voice repeatedly in your head, saying pointless and stupid shit. This is when I entertain fantasies of shoving steak knives through my eardrums. (Mrs. Moody)
• Worshiping my Porn style “endowment” which is a direct result of Porn Star style sex drive. (James)
• Write confrontational essays. When very manic, publish those essays. (me)

*Whether this is manic is arguable.