From zero to hero

The real question isn't can you beat mania? It's do you want to?

Mania doesn’t happen at once, but you can feel it the minute it arrives if you’re attentive and experienced enough. I felt it every time. My cousin once asked me how it feels. I said I start vibrating. The best comparison is the butterflies in your stomach when you’re in love. But I feel it all over my body. You can also recognize mania when you open your eyes in the morning. In an interview for a Slovene magazine, the journalist went with the title ‘If you wake up happy in the morning, you’re already manic’. Nothing wrong with that, I actually said it. What I meant was if a bipolar wakes up in a good mood, but he usually doesn’t, it’s probably a sign that auntie mania came for a visit. But that’s great, some of you are saying. If you can feel it, you can beat it. Yes. The important question isn’t can you beat it but do you want to?

Ljubljana, 2007.

Why would anyone want to be manic? It’s a perfectly legitimate question. The answer is simple. It’s beautiful. If you’re just recovering from a severe depression that lasted for months, you will grab that morning smile on your face and lock it somewhere safe. Hypomania is wonderful. You love the world around you again. You love yourself. The colors are bright again. The food tastes right. You talk to people. You can read a book. You’re not scared anymore. Are you certain that you wouldn’t take a pill that would make those things happen if someone would offer it to you? I took it every single time, even though I promised myself I wouldn’t. Suffering Vs Life. Fear Vs Love. Misery Vs Beauty. Those are just a few examples. In reality, the gap between depression and mania is a lot wider. That’s why they invented the middle ground. The purgatory. Walking the line. Remission is a lovely word for the temporary disappearance of the symptoms of the disease. We could also call it a standstill. Because that’s exactly what it is. No depressions, no manias, at least not the big ones. But there’s another thing about a remission that should be mentioned. Between a plus and a minus, there’s exactly one number and that number is zero.