Semi-Hallucination

Posted on July 24, 2002 in Depression Mania

This is how burnout feels: like a bit of ash dropped on a tablecloth, a ravenous hole that consumes the cotton fabric, creating an emptiness.

There’s a feeling I get when I’ve been writing for days and days, when the metaphors start coming harder to me. It’s a stuffiness, a constipation of the mind that’s almost physical. All nerves running up to the top of the head stop before they reach the crown. The nerve endings point to an empty area, a desensitized zone. This is where I get the feeling, a glowing tonsure of numbness ringed by distant lightning strokes of pain.

Back in the days when my madness was unchecked, I sometimes used to hit my head with a pillow trying to frighten the demon under my scalp like the Chinese used firecrackers to scare off invisible dragons. I sometimes petrified lovers as I tried to shake the dullness away. My brain, unbridled by Prozac, pressed me to appease a taskmaster who tolerated no rest, no slacking off. I was young, uninformed about my sickness, and very afraid to admit to myself that I was mentally ill.

I know better now. If I want to forget the numbness, I must ignore it first and get some rest. After a few hours of sleep, I can take up where I left off. If all else fails, I can direct the writing at it. Metaphor helps me cope with the feeling by giving it a substance, albeit one like a tumor. The fascination I feel when I give it form gives me power over it, to shape it a bit, to move past it. Writing about it gives me the power to escape the plight of other madmen who must beat their heads against padded walls until they kill the numbness by killing themselves.