It's no longer a mystery.
This...thing.
This thing that plagues my mind
with the ups and downs,
ups and downs.
and downs.
I've wondered so long,
the root of my insanity.
And now it has a name.
An identity.
They call it..
Cyclothymia.
A mental disease.
And truthfully,
I don't know what to make
of the newfound knowledge.
To be happy,
or to be sad?
It is strange
to think of it as a handicap
when it has become
an integral part of who I am.
And yet, I have wished.
Oh, how I have wished
it away for so long.
No, I am not this disease,
it is just part of me.
But who am I without it?
This thing...
This..
Cyclothymia.

Once upon a time there lived a little girl. This little girl was no different to anybody else. She liked to play with her friends, she listened to her teachers and everyday she’d go home to watch TV and play with her two brothers and her little sister. This little girl’s life continued to flow smoothly, she went to school, got good grades, started high school, made new friends, and everyday she’d go home to find her mum making dinner and she’d watch her dad come home after a long days’ work.

The little girl had a good life.

Until one August morning when the little girl awoke only to find that she’d never hear her mother’s voice again.

That little girl’s mother died that day and that little girl suddenly wasn’t just a little girl anymore. The little girl was devastated by her loss but she tried her best not to show it. The little girl put on a mask, one that hid all of her pain and suffering from those around her. No matter how much the little girl hurt, no one could ever see it. What the little girl didn’t know was that the longer she wore this mask, the harder it would be to take off. So the mask stayed on, forever hiding all that she felt from the world. This mask took all of the little girl’s emotions away, both good and bad, it made her completely numb.

So the little girl learnt how to pretend.

She pretended that she was fine. She pretended to be happy when something good happened and pretended to be sad when something bad happened. The little girl was able to pretend for four years before the cracks started to appear in her mask. You see after four years of pretending that everything was fine pressure started to build under the mask. Every fake smile, every fake laugh….. Every fake tear, it all built the pressure up under that mask. Until one day the cracks in the little girl’s mask got so big that the mask shattered into thousands of tiny pieces that could never be put back together again, and all of the emotions, the fake smiles, laughs and fake tears; everything under that mask came out all at once.
Suddenly the little girl couldn’t pretend anymore. Everyone had seen the mask break; they had all seen what was hiding beneath it. So the little girl stopped pretending, but after so long without real emotions she realised that she didn’t know how to be happy, sad, angry, anxious…….. She didn’t know how to feel anything.
The little girl that had once hidden from her emotions, her pain, the world and even herself was forced to face it all at once.

The little girl couldn’t handle it.

The little girl went to the doctors and asked them to fix her. They told her that she was depressed. They gave her some pills and told her that they would make the pain go away. And they did, for a little while at least, but then new problems emerged. Sure the pills took away the pain, but now it was almost like there was too much happiness. The little girl saw the world in Technicolor vision; her thoughts raced and flew faster than anything known to mankind. She had compulsions to clean and to create, to socialise and love. She wanted to yell her happiness from well above the tree tops. Nothing could stop her. She felt immortal. Death was but a tiny distant memory to her.

This feeling never lasted long.

Before long the depression would come back, she found herself with a blade in her hand and tears streaming down her face many times. Too many times she found herself asking what the point in living was. All she wanted to do was die. She experimented with different kinds of overdoses, she got sick and most importantly she stopped caring. She didn’t care about anyone else, she didn’t care about herself. All she wanted was for the world to just stop spinning. The depression took over, until suddenly the world would change and colour would come back. That’s when the compulsions would come back, the racing thoughts, and the happiness. All of it would come rushing back. But just as quickly as it came; it went. This cycle continued for a long time until, during a moment of depression, she got a little too close to death and found herself in a psychiatric hospital.

All of the doctors and nurses agreed that there was more than just depression plaguing the little girl. They threw around words like bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder and cyclothymia. They gave the little girl new pills. This time they were supposed to stop her from going high, and also low. They were supposed to keep her stable. And then, they sent her home. They messed with her medication a lot, trying to find the right ones. They started her on one hell of a rollercoaster ride; and on that rollercoaster ride, is where you can find that little girl today.

We pause to rest on the hilltops just before
the afternoon gives way to evening
While her young child
crawls innocently across the grass
A tiny cherubic visage silhouetted by the slow flare
of the summer sun enshrining the scene
She tells me
that even with these things
that bring her such intense joy
the darkness would not relent
It was always there taunting her
just beneath the surface

She tells me she wants out of these panicked strain eclipses
tugging cantilever protrusions through heart chambers
The worry of writhing sickness murmuring like scorned blasphemers retreating to cimmerian shade
Incessentally dominating
the pleasant moments of her life

I could not offer any reassurances
other than to say
Perhaps these moments
must interlace
forever woven together by
the passage of time
that we are blessed and doomed
to walk alongside them simultaneously
And that just as light and dark
are separate parts of the same day
Our experiences
are just different expressions
of a magnificent existence
on an unstoppable wheel.

A stranger adrift, shattered
pieces sinking, flaws and virtues alike
i try my best not to get into trouble, but i
i've got a war in my mind

i watch the clouds darken as the sun goes down
knowledge brightens the night

all dressed up with no where to go
lets hitch this winged ship and roam for a while
escape the plunging waves of these troublesome seas
leave the daily nuances behind

perpetually defiled
i accept who i am

there was a child whose father
brews rice at dawn
before the eyes of her mother
she frowns and stands like a pawn

her neighbors grumble saying
her lips a peg for pots
but they've seen nothing
what's inside her hearts

at the age of ten she thinks
like a hundred times her age
she burns her brows at nights
while her siblings sleep in their caves

she stands in the dark trails
her childhood can't see or hear
but her heart alone sees
how much she wanted to be free                                                                                                            

there's a spring of tears
and a lake of fire
she locks her door
and hides her face inside

cyclothymia runs her blood, they said
but their blind to see
blind to see her in a bottomless pit
almost defied

and her mother only sees
a face with a frown
a frown not the fullness
of her heart with a crown

but her father looks into her eyes
his smiles washed away the frown on her brows
leaving no flecks but a face that radiates
she flows with the rivers and seas

he sees her depths and lifts his pride
his a shelter she trusts her back and her spine
and her face glows in the dark a luminous green
then she finds her way and strength to walk on her path

the child with a frown no longer exists
her mother stands still in wonders
the neighbors and their mouths are shot
as a well grown garden arise
full of flowers bees and butterflies

One day I'll probably stop writing.
The world would run out of things
to write about.
My mind would run out of things
to write about.

And a terrible lull will linger
over my head.
Probably apathy.
Probably cyclothymia.

I'll leave myself out of everything.
I will only listen to the sound around me,
not the sound that's coming from me.

I am awake.
I swear I'm awake.

All fruit is sweet as marzipan
and seraphs carol just for me
Each brook sings like a silver lyre
and finches trill in every tree

Life is a cloth embossed with gold
and even through the blackest rains
No rainbow seems too hard to reach
for ichor courses through my veins

Those daedal thoughts flow thick and fast
like honey from mosaicked hive
The world's a Garden of Delights
I burst with joy to be alive

And now it starts, the skyward flight
slow at first then gath'ring pace
Just like a breathless fairground ride
that sends me whirling into space

And on my climb to crackling sun
I glimpse a gilded paradise
That sphere aswirl with cherubim
and full of riches without price

But like hot-headed Icarus
who thought that he would try his luck
I, too, fly straight towards the sun
and all my feathers come unstuck

Then rainbows smash like Roman glass
and splinters ****** all around
My head aswarm with twinkling stars
as floating castles hit the ground

That plump brocade I once called life
is torn asunder at the seams
Now all I wish to do is sleep
and quench my thirst in lethean streams.