There is a sense of horror that comes only with uncertainty: is this genuinely what I feel and know? Is this what I desire?
Am I feeling truthfully?
Ever since I first grappled with my mania and my depression and my anxiety I have always wondered if what I felt were real, or hyper (or hypo) expressions of what truly lay underneath. Do I really like this person? Am I truly happy? Do I honestly want this for me? Or is it, in actuality, I feel affection but not desire; I feel elation but not contentment; I am okay, but would rather be anywhere/nowhere/everywhere else?
Recently I have had to ask that myself further because I was terrified — what if, is it possible, that the reason why I haven’t written anything — have not had the drive or the patience or the will, is because I am no longer sure if I feel properly? Is this legitimate pain? Is the thumping in my chest a result of a particular fear or an overarching sense of anxiety that encompasses me daily?
When I tell someone I like them, do I truly? When I run my hands through someone’s hair, is it truly desire? Is it the anxiety of losing? Is it the mania that partners (and results in) reckless abandon?
When the butterflies in my stomach make themselves known, is it through the joy of living?
Or the worry of having to continue to live still?
I’ve always thought of myself as feeling, and feeling deeply. Alcohol amplifies that emotion, alcohol dampens it. Anxiety makes itself present, anxiety condenses it. Depression, too. And mania.
I am worried now because I do not know if I truly feel what I feel, if I truly know what I think I do. I am never more tired than when I ask myself — or am asked — if I am happy, because depending on who you ask, or what part of my brain you prod, or the demons that occupy my mind, the answer will be different. Anxiety will say I can never be, because the future is (the future was?) (the future will always be?) uncertain and incoherent; depression questions the premise; my mania, well, everything for her is raucous joy and triumph.
Am I scared? My anxiety will bother me in the middle of the night, and I will wake up in cold sweat and with watery palms, because a mistake from a week ago is all I see when I close my eyes. Depression, well, she cowers and shakes and finds comfort behind bookshelves and big dreams and weighted blankets. Mania will throw up middle finger after middle finger after middle finger — scared? Fuck is that word?
I have always been told that what I feel is real, that the anxiety or the depression or the mania just increase them ten, a thousandfold.
Does this mean it’s still real? When I cry from frustration, shout in ecstasy, wallow in anguish, is it real?
Is it real? Is it real? Is it real?
Of perpetual finds 