I think of the way he landed me on the map,

the way the first time he sat on my bed across from me and tried to explain to me how he felt, I could feel it.

I could feel how the world seemed to shift into this small microcosm of a fragment in time.

I could relate to him in a way I could never relate to anyone.

I could see his mind flash through the same tickling sensations as it did for me.



Somehow in the minutes, I turned.


I pushed the mirror up to my own lense, saw how weak my knees had become, saw how little I had inhabited my own mind.

I sat with him while he burst through the rapid fire responses of his brain grasping for dopamine,


I closed my eyes and allowed deep breaths to overpower me while I pictured tall evergreen trees surrounded by fog.


I pictured us standing in the eerie forest holding hands, inhaling misty, deep cold breaths while our bodies regulated to the surroundings.

I envisioned the way he kissed, how his lips feverishly grasped for mine, how I could forget the way the world spun for hours, days, weeks.

I could be placed into moments and feel them over power me, how roses smelt, the sun slowly setting, the cars speeding past.


I took in the time I had with him, the calamity it provided my five senses while I stuck my head out of his passenger window and watched as the stars chased us across state lines.

I didn’t excuse my behavior, I didn’t hide it. I allowed him to see the four am hospital beds, how sometimes the only time I could breathe was if I rolled to my side and bit down.

I impulsively let him into my life, I opened the door wide open and allowed him to see the sides of myself I didn’t recognize, I’d never personally met, I let him love me for all of it.

I let him hate me for all of it.

I met myself through his perception of me, through the way he held me, pushed me, pulled me.

I opened my arms wide to the potential he provided, the small details he could pick out that no one had bothered to do.

I fell hard and deeply, impulsively and erratically.

But I didn’t blame mania,
I didn’t blame myself.

I just held it close and ingested the time I had,
the only way I knew how to with him,


by simply being unapologetically myself.