“There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you're high it's tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one's marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends' faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against-- you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality” - Redfield Jamison, an unquiet mind
Story by Anonymous.
Tell me this friend dear friend, stay with me and think for a moment. If you could feel so perfectly alive, so completely at one with the world, with a fire inside of you that ignites your every move - a fire that promises to never go out, never to leave you alone in the cold darkness - why would you ever wish for that to end? Why would you want for anything other than this delicious euphoria? Where sins don't exist, your blood glows and there are no right or wrongs? Why would you want anyone else's arms wrapped around you?
She is standing on the top step of a ladder, unsteady but feeling rapturous, her skin glowing. But being perched here on this top step is just like any being in any other high place. It's not without danger. It’s menacing risks. At this high altitude, it can be hard to get enough air. Barely lucid but unmistakably alive, she thinks she is divine. The danger is so real from these great heights, but from this here she is easily tricked into thinking that nothing is wrong. She thinks the adrenaline that surges through makes her invincible. That it’s going to be OK forever. Time loses all meaning and the days pass by rapidly and unnoticed - they morph into one long, delirious stretch of time. She dozes off, not to sleep, but she surrenders to the seductive depths of the exhilaration. She stays here for a while, frolicking in the endless pleasures on her mind.
Then, suddenly, she wakes up.
She’s cold and alone on the bathroom floor. Her clothes have gone.
She’s scared. Terrified of her next thought. Afraid of her next move.
“Whatever you do, don’t leave me,” She pleads with a friend.
A friend who may or may not be there.
But still, she screams out her words in whispers and begs not to be left alone.
She begs the darkness to stop cutting shapes that she can't name into the outlines of her world.
But she is dancing with the devil again. A pirouette she was hoping to forever avoid. But the endless aching need to destruct is back.
She and Lord Lucifer reacquaint themselves, for she is such a fool for the sound of his voice.
The dance always starts with just her. Just her and the music.
The music, as it reverberates through her soul, somehow lets her breathe freely.
She is not just listening anymore. She becomes the music. The music is inside of her. The music is her.
The dance continues and she is contagious.
She is fascinating to everyone, and they to her. The mundane becomes exhilarating, the tedious - simply tantalizing.
She dances with far too many, she dances far too often. He is always there with her. Watching. Waiting.
She has been going for days, she has no idea of the time or date.
She has blisters on her feet and the soles of her shoes are wearing thin.
She doesn't care. She keeps dancing. Running towards the lights - her heart ablaze.
Her money goes. Her rationale evaporates. Her senses on fire. It’s all too fast. It’s an expensive dance, this tango she so loves. It's a dance of liberation, of wild abandonment. One without remorse and one with no regret.
The useless possessions pile up. Obsessions and meaningless infatuations with things she must have in her world. The experiences get more and more threatening, danger is drawing in closer to her world. People come and go, overwhelming feelings of lust and endless games of seduction.
Sleep is desperately needed but cannot be achieved. She feels herself begin to break.
She can’t keep up anymore. The race she was once miles ahead in and easily winning - she is starting to lose.
By now, she’s disoriented, burnt, alone and afraid.
She can’t dance anymore, she can only run.
She is not lost but she can't find her way home.
The thoughts come too quickly, too heavily, too fast.
There is blood on her feet and the tears are thick on her cheeks.
The music has stopped and she can't remember any of the lyrics she so loved. She sits down and tries to breathe. The air won't come. Her vision is blurred. But the dance is over. Lucifer has left.
And the music has finally stopped.