There was a time when I was young and nieve to the world that I thought everyone suffered in quiet agony.
Not caused by others or the situation you existed in.
Just silent soul-crushing pain.
Pain that carved a hole in your chest taking over where your lungs should be.
Cutting off airflow to the rest of the meat sack your soul called home.
I never can remember the last time I was truly happy.
Genuinely happy where my laughs were real with substance and my smiles weren't hollowed out caricatures of the ones I saw around me.
Hollowness, I guess is the second form of this agony.
Where im not lying on the floor begging for the pain in my chest to stop.
Where instead I am moving through molasses in time with self-preservation because right now I don't feel like dying.
It's too much effort and apathy is my best friend.
Automatically living because your brain tells your heart to beat so, and your stomach to take in nutrition.
No matter how poisonous overall to the system it may be.
Some say your past self chose this suffering for a misdeed.
Redemption of the soul.
Purification.
The gods above or below didn't choose it.
Free will and all that.
Then on a rare cloudy day,
(**** those who say the sun is the only thing that helps bring you happiness).
You feel giddy and you don't know why your smiling.
Or laughing.
Or full of energy.
(It's definitely not that sun with its Vitamin D).
The thing broken inside of you is suddenly okay.
The cracks have been taped over.
With haphazard stitches, that wouldn't stop a wound from bleeding out.
But your smiling and laughing and spinning in the middle of the living room like a six-year-old.
Watching the ceiling blend and blur until your dizzy and you fall to the ground.
Talking a mile a minute even though your body is going too slow.
TOO ******* SLOW, HURRY UP, HURRY UP!!
Smelling flowers, hugging loved ones, baking too many sweets, dancing to slow songs like a techno beat.
Your heart is strong for once beating loud and heaving.
Ready to burst.
Some people stay like this for a week, a month, two maybe or more.
Anf they climb higher and higher.
The Dropdown is like Goliath's height.
Gravity taking hold and slamming you to the ground.
I, me, we, us...
We last not even a day, sometimes half a day, sometimes, most times, its a good solid hour...maybe less I don't know.
I don't remember.
Then im apologizing, second-guessing myself.
Trying my best not to cry.
Selfishly and guilty thanking whoever gave you a broken body that those highs aren't as high as Goliath is tall.
The Anger is next.
It simmers below the skin.
Bubbly, itchy, tight.
There is a monster that wants to escape.
Shiny things beckon you.
Overpasses on the freeway sing to you.
Traffic seems to fascinate you, and all of a sudden you want to test out the physics of a car speeding by.
Curiosity gets you.
Do things that move really stay in motion until something stops it?
Are you, I, we, us big enough to stop it?
Like Superman stopping a missile in the sky.
Your self-preservation kicks in then.
Sometimes. Rarely.
It shakes its head.
"No, you know this, you took physics in high school remember. You tested out this theory before."
Before though was a toy car and a golf ball.
Not the bones that hold us caged inside.
Stupid you smile and wait for the light to turn green and the silly what man to shines bright.
Funny, Desperation bled into anger just thing.
Selfish little thing.
I guess I don't need to talk about you anymore.
Suddenly! It's there!
A small hidden smile sits on your face.
Content is the word.
Its feather touch caress's your cheek.
Lulling you to sleep.
Though you stay awake.
The night bleeds into the morning.
You stay asleep until three the next day.
The pain hasn't set in, the hollowed-out sensation isn't anywhere near you yet.
The abnormal and rare unicorn that is Mania.
In its many wonderful terrifying forms is a galaxy away.
You might not see it for another half-decade but there is hope still.
The Rage settles, quiet you can't remember how you calmed the raging beast this time.
But it sleeps now nuzzled warmly into your neck.
You run light fingers over flesh just to make sure you didn't feed it blood this time.
All clean and smooth.
Yes.
That desperate snake is also quiet now.
No longer famished.
It's had its pound of flesh.
A warm weight settles in your chest now.
The airways are clear.
Air, polluted maybe.
(The world is a mess.)
Fills you up.
You wake the world is tilted and the bottles line your dresser.
I didn't' miss a dose, did I?
What time is it?
What day?
Is it still the same year I least fell asleep in?
"Yes, you're okay. We all slip from time to time."
The doctor says.
"No, I didn't skip a day...do I need to readjust?"
"Maybe."
Then, as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
The cycle begins again.

There is nothing I can say or do to ease this pain.
It radiates from the center.
Where my heart should be.
Pulling unpleasant thoughts into its orbit.
A black hole of desperation.
Disconnected and disoriented.
A shark dragging its prey to the bottom of the ocean.
Drowning.
Leaving nothing behind but the ripples on the surface.
The moon holds on.
Dragging waves higher than the dreams you conjure.