Dear Hypomania,
I confess that I’m never quite sure when you’re going to stop by for a visit; like an alcoholic relative lacking financial stability, you tend to show up unannounced and all-too-willing to sit on my couch and watch me work. I suspect you like the more mild seasons as I do, but here it is in the middle of a Midwestern heat wave with a heat index of 115 on a good day, and here you are.
I’m never quite sure what feats of fancy you will come carrying in your sack like an out-of-season Santa Claus. Will you imbue me with the energy to write the next Great American Novel? Will you stick around long enough for me to write the next four Great American Novels? How long will you keep me company during the long, otherwise lonely nights of sleeping for four hours and then waking up with boundless exuberance for life, tending to laundry, polishing off some two-hundred pages of ‘light reading,’ and still having time to shower and pack meticulous lunches for everyone I love and even bond with my surly cats a bit? Surely, you won’t leave me high and dry before I’ve had time to accomplish all that my juiced-up brain tells me I can accomplish, will you, Hypomania?
You’re a great companion, you know. When I’m with you, I never feel more creative, more alive, more happy. Food tastes better. Orgasms are grander. Alcohol might as well be squeezed from grapes from Zeus’ own vineyard. When you’re around, it’s like a third person has moved into my marriage; a silent, respectfully invisible third person who just likes to poke hir head around corners and make sure everything is good. Then zie smiles when I nod happily in response, and whisks away again to the shadows, content to simply bathe in the essence of me.
When you’re here, I feel stronger, better, more ready to take on the day, rather than to have it take me on, as the song goes (yes, we all know it was the Very First Music Video on MTV, nobody is surprised by this anymore). I can do anything. Words come out in syllables and words and sentences and in pages upon pages of paragraphs, and they are breathtakingly astute and weave tight, jovial narratives with just the right amounts apiece of wit and wisdom. My focus is sharper. Projects get done with ease and excellence; stacks of busy work that I’ve let pile up for days, weeks, months become decimated, and I hardly break a sweat. The house stays cleaner; the pets stay more pleased; my wife just watches in loving exasperation as I take care of everything, because it’s my turn now, for the moment. When your spell breaks – and again, I suppose if I had one criticism of you, it would be that a little warning would be nice – I will return to my drabber existence, still surviving, still surfaced, but dimmer, sadder, somehow. I won’t be left with nothing, but I will miss you when you decide that you must go, and you always do.
When you come for me, Hypomania, I feel as though I would follow you anywhere. I realize that you sometimes keep dubious company. I even see how dangerous my feelings of wild abandonment for you are, if my concerned Internet pal who keeps helpfully trying to diagnose me with Bipolar Disorder every time I mention your cameo appearance in my life in passing is any indication. I should not meddle in the affairs of the mind; and yet, like a moth to a flame, here I am, waiting and willing for you to entice me to dance.
So thank you, Hypomania, for being there for me; for letting me play in your sandbox, even though you just politely shake your head every time I ask to make definite reservations; for letting me live and love and dream bigger than I do when you’re not around. Thank you, Hypomania. You’re a dear, dear friend.