Mania: written on loose-leaf and stuffed in my desk drawer. January 31st, 2022.

Mania; yes, that emotion that so strongly grips you, digging its claws deep into your throat until you quite simply choke and die. Except you don’t really get to feel the release; your spine doesn’t snap, even as it wrings you out like a damp cloth. You choke and choke, perpetually seconds—no—milliseconds away from wasting away. What can you do but try and peel it off of your body, even though you know that your strength alone will never allow you to win.

I sit here, trying my best to not wish for the release of death. That would be too easy, and then everything would be over. True, the pain—the grip that mania has on me—would vanish, but so too would the heat of my blood, the beautiful instrument in my chest aching as the metronome of life, and the conductor of it all. It would be left purposeless, and thus would conduct no more. No more sweet melodies of hands with pens balance in fingers, playing elegantly across ruled-paper.

Without the sweet conductor of living, and the bloody band following every wave of its hand, there would be no more music. None beautiful, and none as hideously monstrous as mania. Release would be nice; one large crescendo into a final note, cut short before it be held in a fermata.

But I don’t want my orchestra to bid adieu. With all the pain, the claws that mania so readily bares, I believe I’d still rather feel pain than nothing at all. Perhaps I started writing this, wishing for a large closing night, but the moment I was at the ticket booth, debating handing the currency of joy over for this final show, I decided to withhold that payment.

I will continue to live, in spite of the pain. Mania may have her fangs in my throat, but I will close my eyes, and pretend it to be a lover’s kiss.