It’s fascinating, isn’t it?  To be here, to be crazy or treated, to be in or out of your head, to be safe or dangerous and self-aware?  To watch yourself dip into insomnia, to take a pen in hand and scribble across paper, late at night.  To watch yourself move closer on the couch, catch yourself and move back away—to do this over and over again for the course of an evening.  Advance, riposte, retreat.

I’m back here, sitting happily on the lap of my good friend, the one and only, the amazing Sir 100 Mg Lamictal.  All is well, no fuck-ups, no regrets for the past four weeks [except, maybe, that they had to happen in the first place].  Just fine, thank you.

But it’s fascinating.  When I dip out of personality, when I move toward either extreme, I suddenly feel like I’m outside of myself, watching.  Pulling the strings, maybe.  There are subtitles and stage directions.

“Girl sits in class, overwhelmed by her frustration.  Moisture—not tears, but something else—rise to the corners of her eyes.  When the session is over, she stands and walks into the restroom.  She walks into a stall, sits down, tilts 45 degrees and sucks her thumb, head against the side of the stall.  She breathes.  She breathes.  She breathes.”

“Girl laughs laughs laughs so loudly, people turn.  In a hushed voice, she talks shit about the people sitting in the room with her.  The corner of her mouth turns up, smirks.  Not the usual one, her normal smile.  Her eyes tilt down.  This smile and these eyes—fuck, she looks wicked.  Fuck, she feels wicked.  Someone should watch out.”

She should watch out.

I could continue on for days, you know—I could go on and on, give case after case.  I could tell you about watching myself spike alcohol into my blood, about tequila shots and trying not to drive willfully into trees.  I could tell you about watching myself lie awake at night or about the long and wandering thoughts, the deep dangerous ones that would flash across my mind.  I could tell you all these things, and so many more.

But it’s all prologue, or prelude, or whatever, to the best result of my self-awareness, what finally occurred to me:

I was at the grocery store, buying our weekly supplies.  Here, the bag boys always offer to take out your cart, and then ask if you’re sure if you decline.  I thought about it, and wondered if they are just always spoiling to go outside, if they want to escape their inside duties for a moment.  So, one night, I asked the bag boy as he was pushing my cart.  “Policy,” he said, “we have to ask a second time.  We have to ask if you’re sure.”  So, the next time I was in, I declined once.  And when asked a second time, I declined again, smiling.  I was in on the secret.

And it occurred to me: when you are manic, the universe is whispering to you.  When you are manic, you are always in on the joke.

You just never realize that the joke is on you.