#polar

I know the empathy borne of despair; I know the fluidity of thought, the expansive, even beautiful, mind that hypomania brings, and I know this is quicksilver and precious and often it's poison. There has always existed a sort of psychic butcher who works the scales of transcendence, who weighs out the bloody cost of true art. ↗

— David Lovelace

#bipolar #hypomania #manic-depression #mental-illness #art

A vivid Imagination is awesome a Manic Imagination is a curse. ↗

— Stanley Victor Paskavich

#imagination

When you are mad, mad like this, you don't know it. Reality is what you see. When what you see shifts, departing from anyone else's reality, it's still reality to you. ↗

— Marya Hornbacher

#madness #manic-depression #mental-illness #reality #life

Soon madness has worn you down. It’s easier to do what it says than argue. In this way, it takes over your mind. You no longer know where it ends and you begin. You believe anything it says. You do what it tells you, no matter how extreme or absurd. If it says you’re worthless, you agree. You plead for it to stop. You promise to behave. You are on your knees before it, and it laughs. ↗

— Marya Hornbacher

#eating-disorder #madness #surrender #voice #worthless

Telling someone who is manic that she's manic is like telling a dictator that he's a dick. Neither is going to admit it, and both are willing to torture you to prove their points. ↗

— Melody Moezzi

#life

Insomuch as the structure of this book parallels that of my own mind, it boasts about as much order and linearity as a hallucination. ↗

— Melody Moezzi

#life

Hunter was bipolar, for crying out loud. He had checked into the nut house on more than one occasion and, honestly, I was already starting to feel the anxiety of living together. I would need to get my martial arts skills up to par to deal with this lunatic. I knew that I would also need to pick up a copy of Kill Bill at my next convenience and take notes as I watched, just in case a fight happened to break out in the kitchen. Also, at night, I had decided that I would need to sleep with either a small pistol or a flamboyant hunting knife under my pillow for a quick grab, in case he skipped his meds one night and decided to kill me. I needed to be prepared for the unthinkable. ↗

— Chase Brooks

#crazy #fight #humor #art

I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In sort, for myself, I am a hard act to follow. ↗

— Kay Redfield Jamison

#mania #manic #mental-illness #psychology #present

If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living? ↗

— Kay Redfield Jamison

#depression #mood-disorders #care

When politicians start talking about large groups of their fellow Americans as 'enemies,' it's time for a quiet stir of alertness. Polarizing people is a good way to win an election, and also a good way to wreck a country. ↗

— Molly Ivins

#polarization #politics #elections