Party/Monster

Mania will make you believe you can do anything, be anything. It gives you endless energy, brilliant ideas, and lets you in on the universe’s secrets. Everything is beautiful, and filled with magic. The higher you go, the less things make sense, but you’re okay with that, because you’re reinventing the rules. You’ve left behind the need to sleep or eat. You are a messiah. You have unlocked your soul’s potential. Time stretches on in a way it never has before. All the answers you’ve ever sought can be found in the span of a second, because your mind has become unbound, and moves a lot faster than it used to. Life is a party. Up up up you go, and reality fractures further. You become irritable and edgy and so, so angry. What you once thought was true and magnificent and real is being challenged, threatened. Seeping in through the cracks, are the monsters from the dark corners of your mind, waiting to pounce. And you falter a step, then another. And that once seemingly graceful dance is revealed to be an unsteady, off-kilter scramble. The once tremendous beauty was rotten all along. And you rage against the reality that you are not well. That those magical realizations weren’t real. That you tore your family apart in the process. And you spin out further, into the no-man’s land of psychosis, where your traumas reappear before your very eyes. And you finally admit that maybe you need help. But you still don’t want to come down. Because then you’d have to face it all. What you’ve done. You would have to face the reality that you’re the one that’s become the monster. 

To my family, I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me.

After my last manic episode, my relationship with my family was left in ruins. I was left with the task of sorting through my reality - what was real, and what was a product of my illness? And where does the responsibility for it all lie? My perspective of what happened during that episode vastly differed from what my family had witnessed. And there was an overwhelming, debilitating feeling of shame for the pain I had caused my loved ones. 

My memories of that time are fragmented. I remember beautiful moments like playing ukulele in the grass and dressing to express how I was feeling. And the hallucinations and delusions I experienced when the mania worsened still feel real to me today. I extensively documented this episode through photos and video, because I felt that what I was experiencing was important in some way. As much as I wanted others to be able to understand my perspective, my motivation for documenting my mania came from the deeper need to answer the question: “what is happening to me?” I think on some level, I was aware that I was having a manic episode (sometimes I don’t have that level of awareness while manic), and wanted a way to be able to sort through it all once the dust settled. 

But mania has its costs. It ripped apart my family. I ripped apart my family. And 5 years later, the pain of that is still too fresh. I’ve found that through the process of creating this installation, my family has started to talk about that manic episode, and my shame has lessened. I’ve realized that our dueling perspectives from that time are both true and valid to their own degrees. And being “right” is a hollow victory. Through the many stitches and mends on my patchwork quilt, I make amends. And through the perspective that I left behind, I learn to forgive myself.