Hypomania

Hypomania is a behavioral phenomenon characterized by short episodes of disordered mood and emotional regulation, bestowing its subject with divine inspiration with great cost. Contrary to popular belief, hypomania is not necessarily less intense than mania.

Synopsis

Do not get hypomania confused with happiness. Just as depression does not mean sadness, mania does not mean happiness. It means energy, motivation. Your mind is racing, a million miles an hour. You hate the idea of staying still. You have to do something.

Unfortunately, hypomania is quite a bad state to make any major life decisions. Not just because of all the symptoms of mania - we'll get to that in a second - but because this isn't gonna last anyway. Hypomania is short, very short. Maybe a few hours. Maybe a few days. Not much longer than that. You'll forget why you're writing the to-do list before you're even done with it. (You don't have the patience for a to-do list, anyway.)

Other observed effects of hypomania:

• Realizing that shame is a completely useless chain on your selfhood.
  • Now it's gone.
• Paranoia. Sometimes.
• You remember everything. Everything.
• Perfect clarity.
• Your friends notice, for sure.
  • They know that motivation and inspiration are two things you struggle with, so they assume this is a drastic improvement in the state of things.
• Creative inspiration.
  • This will be the most you've drawn in the past three years.
    • This is the best case scenario.
• You are a hammer in search of nails. There is a nail that's been sticking out in your mind for years.
  • So you hammer it.

Plot summary

In the moment, you have no idea why you're saddled with all of this shame in the first place. But this is not one of those moments, so we can slow down a bit.

Shame is the mechanism you survive by. It's the one thing we all have in common. You keep a carefully controlled measure of shame by your side, like a bargaining chip. But we both know surviving is not the same as living. In that moment, you want to feel alive.

So you hammer it.

There are doors that not even your beloved friends will open. Nobody told you not to, of course, you just know. Behind the door is a nail.

It's kind of ironic trying to write about hypomania during one of the longest, most tedious "depression" episodes of your life; not "depression" as in "I feel sad" but as in "not wanting to do anything ever". I can kinda see why depression and mania are pitted as opposites. I like to imagine depression and anxiety are opposites in the "dog vs. cat" sense. But enough about dogs and cats. Let's talk about mania, and dragons.

Here be dragons

There was a young dragon who was quite nervous all the time. Luckily, the dragon felt like it had a good grasp of what was generally wrong. It felt helpless and even hopeless all the time, limited in what it could do, and for some reason incredibly resistant to the idea of acting in a way that would improve itself. And whenever it wanted to do something nice for itself, it simply couldn't; it worried about the way other people would look down on it for being - you guessed it! - embarrassing, annoying, immature. But worst of all, it feared the idea of making other people uncomfortable. Dragon abhorred the idea of hurting people, and figured that being kind of weird would Hurt People.

Dragon called the doctor, and the doctor said: Major depression and social anxiety disorder. It seemed like the source of it was at least partially biochemical, so the doctor suggested a pretty low dose of SSRI antidepressants. And if needed, the dose could be adjusted over time. Despite how hard Dragon's brain resisted the idea of improving, wanted to wallow in this emptiness forever, it still wanted to get better - so of course, it agreed.

(As a side note, the dragon was also diagnosed on the autism spectrum, but for some ungodly reason wasn't told this until years later.)

This proved to be a very, very good idea. The dragon wasn't perfect at taking medication on time or very consistently, but when it DID take it, the effects were very apparent. It did not open up many options for the young dragon, of course, but at the very least, it enjoyed doing things. It became sociable and more responsible and creative. It wanted to create a lot of things and get its friends together to work with it. It made a website! It made more friends! And for a second, it actually felt things. No longer was the dragon simply sad and sometimes scared; sometimes it felt joy, too!

There was a door that none of its friends could open - but the dragon would. As the dragon inched closer to the doorknob, a wave of anxiety washed over it; such anxiety would render most people paralyzed. But the dragon was different now, and its claws wrapped around the doorknob, and opened the door. Behind the door was one of Dragon's friends.

The next day, the doctor asked how the dragon was doing on its medication. "Oh, I feel so lively!" the dragon said. "It's like I can see color again! But, oh, the anxiety..." Even though the dragon seemed to be no longer depressed, it was still as anxious as ever. With all of the responsibility on the dragon's shoulders, it had more reason to be anxious - so the doctor said, let's raise the dose a little bit, and see how you feel.

Meanwhile, the dragon and its friends convened to discuss The Friend Behind The Door. They, said Dragon's friend, Bard, had been terrorizing all of them for as long as they have known them - but not Dragon. But why not? The friends realized, the Door-friend knew that the Dragon was the only one that could stop them. They knew the Dragon could identify problems and articulate well why it was a problem, so the Door-friend avoided the dragon. And it would end soon.

But little do the other friends know, Dragon was plagued with strange, distressing visions ever since it opened the door. It would dwell on the times it talked to the Door-friend and feel - it would feel - and then in under an hour, it would stop, and the Dragon no longer felt anything about the memory. It must have been the dragon's resilience - the Dragon didn't feel anger like its friends did, of course, which makes it all the better that it would be the one to talk to Door-friend.

And then it did. Door-friend was gone.

From that point on, Dragon's friends saw it as a leader, and when the dragon's friends needed help, it would help them. Even when the task at hand made the dragon sick with normally-paralyzing anxiety, the dragon pushed past it to help his friends. But it was well worth it to the dragon; many problems were solved, and it felt truly wanted by its friends. It was special to the Dragon to be so relied on.

But it was still stressful, and thus the dragon asked the doctor for a higher dose. Perhaps this would temper its anxiety.

Something nagged at Dragon, and it was Bard. The way Door-friend departed left a sour taste in the dragon's mouth; it had been convinced its former friend was malicious, cunning - but in their parting words, Dragon saw something very important - humanity. And the dragon hated the idea of hurting people. But why was Bard so hell-bent on getting rid of Door-friend?

Before Bard, the dragon saw another door. And before the wave of dread could wash over it, Dragon opened the door without thinking.

The next day, Dragon realized it had been far too long since it had gone on a good old fashioned Walk. And for some reason (after crying by itself for a bit), the dragon felt inspired to improve in some way. And exercise is one of the best therapies! So the dragon went for a walk.

The dragon walked for much too long down a street lined with houses that looked the same, yards that looked the same. Not a tree or bird in sight. Just dogs, dogs that barked. It reached the end of the street, and continued walking.

Then, the dragon found a road that snaked through the forest. To one side, cars roared past too loud, too fast. On the other, darkness gathered in the trees. The dragon walked a world just between the two and felt sick. It reached the end of the road, and continued walking.

Past the forest, the trees opened up to a river where the sun finally shone through. There was one person there, sitting by the river's edge.

"Call me Sage," said the guest by the river, who seemed unbothered by the tears staining the dragon's face. Thus followed the question, "What brings you here?" and the dragon said something about, oh, needing to get out of the house a bit more, feeling like building better habits, things like that, and what about you? Sage responded with a very long story, but to keep it short, the reason was uncomfortably similar. They were here on impulse.

Sage tended to have these horrible episodes - first thinking about something terrible, and then "recovering" but not really in the form of suddenly really, really wanting to improve themselves. And they figured it was as good as a time as any to go for a walk! It was not a good idea. Sage explained, this was another episode for them. And they thought they were seizing the opportunity to do something good for themselves this time.

"Funny enough, I get those a lot, except I'm not really manic, just motivated," said the dragon.

"Are you sure?" Sage replied.

The dragon ran all the way home in fear.

Dragon realized that its medication was, in fact, making them incredibly manic. These episodes of high energy and emotion were not, in fact, due to being Not Depressed. And these episodes made them more anxious, paranoid, and confrontational. It started to think that people were out for it. And it needed to stop. "No more," the dragon told their doctor, and that was that.

The dragon realized, damage was done. Door-friend was long gone. But it thought it had a chance to redeem themselves, and so it apologized to Bard. I will save you the details. Let's just say the dragon saw Bard's true colors, this helped absolutely no one involved, and they stopped being friends anyway. That was that.

Dragon quickly stepped down from the responsibility of being its' friends' "leader"; no longer did it trust itself with the responsibility. The anxiety returned, and let's say Dragon doesn't quite have the social energy that it used to. The name "dragon" hung loosely over itself, like it had molted and never realized until now; it shed this skin and called itself Rocco.

The End: The Very Special Episode

Every now and again, Rocco still thinks about the bad things that happened to it, and the bad things it had done. It couldn't go for walks if it wanted to; the empty space between steps and the silence that fills the streets leave plenty of room for the bad memories to seep in. And then it feels like an explosion; idle dwelling turned to frustration and panic, the memories came in like locusts, and a thousand words of frustration flew free.

And then, it stops, abruptly as it came. And Rocco feels inspired, again. Inspired to take self-improvement into its own claws. "This will be the time I finally get my shit together," Rocco thinks to itself.

This lasts about, maybe, two or three days, and then Rocco forgets all of it again. Forgets the panic, the sickness, the frustration, the hatred. And forgets the habit it tried fruitlessly to build.

"Yeah," Sage tells Rocco. "I get those a lot."

Rocco is prescribed mood stabilizers.