Thoughts are physical things. Each has its own shape and weight and texture. They colour the day. Filter perceptions, cast shadows or dazzle according to their nature. Some days are like popping candy. Citrus sharp thoughts that sting and stimulate. Orange and lemon and bright, bright green. Concentration crumbles under the joyful, dizzy onslaught. No time to hold on to a thought before it fragments, scatters, gets lost in something else. These are happy days. Productive days. Quick laughter and flaring temper days. Days of hidden dangers.
Then there are the cotton wool days. Filled with colourless, weightless thoughts that float and stick and suffocate. You can drown in the fog of nothingness. Loose oneself in hours, days, even weeks. Camouflaged, absorbed, dragged down until you become lost in the dark. Invisible. Helpless. Without resistance.
The ball bearing days are the worst. Black and red and ice white thoughts thunder. Pour. Fling themselves. Hundreds and thousands the size of your fist from every direction. As creative as the popping candy days but dark, intense, unbearable. They bruise, smash, destroy. Unless you find a way to escape, to hide from the torrent.
They know no boundaries, these thoughts. No master. They can squeeze themselves, popping candy, cotton wool and ball bearing, into one small span of twenty four hours. Or take turns over weeks, or months or even years. Cotton wool days are the punctuation marks. The pauses between drowning in the dark and flying amongst rainbows.
What colour will tomorrow's thoughts be?
What you are describing sounds quite like bipolar disorder. Popping Candy and Ball Bearings sound like mania, both the good, productive hair-on-fire creativity days, and, conversely, the dark, brooding, anxious thoughts that permeate when the euphoria dissipates.
The times in between that you describe could be periods of normality of feeling.
Many creative types are bipolar...it doesn't have to be a bad thing.
Posted by: TLC | Thursday, June 29, 2006 at 08:59 PM