Spaz Attack

    I freely admit that I am a Spaz. No matter how I try to maintain a semblance of rationality, my brain and emotions are still all over the map. I run the gamut, high to low, hilarity to weeping, optimist to reclusive malcontent. And I can run that gamut in a matter of hours, loping through the full range of emotions, rarely breaking stride. If I can manage to detach myself for a bit, study, analyze, view from afar, then I can find amusement in my emotional chaos. Even when I am trapped on the inside there is a certain sense of surreal, comic entertainment. There is that downside of uncontrollable weeping that robs me of breath and makes me feel like vomiting, but it is usually, though not always, of a much shorter duration than the manic episodes where I feel nigh on invincible.
    From the minute I wake in the morning until I fall asleep at night, it is a moment by moment adventure through the rocky, sometimes dangerous terrain that is my personality. I never know what lay around the next corner, over the next rise, lurking beneath the surface of a deceptively quiet pond. I just keep moving forward knowing that whatever lurks there, waiting to ambush me, will likely pass quickly like a spring thunderstorm. But, like a spring thunderstorm, there is the potential for damage in the wake. Usually nothing too significant, maybe a few downed branches, the occassional wildfire, a bit of flooding. Nothing I can't handle with a bit of elbow grease, duct tape and body bags.
    I try to keep myself stabilized, rein in the chaos, manage the mania, dampen the depression. Being of a wildly fluctuating emotional nature does throw me into the path of outside forces. Seemingly trivial and insignificant incidents can trigger a full blown spaz attack with unpredictible results. It doesn't even require an outside factor, I can imagine my own. I can imagine drama with such vivid clarity that even despite my own knowledge of its lack of substance, it has as the ability to throw me into a spin with its seeming reality. I will feel a build up of emotions, like a pressure cooker, that needs only the merest breath to release the pent up whirlwind of super-heated chaos. A virtual firestorm of emotions; the good, the bad, and the hysterical. The emotions will sweep through me with the rapidity of a lightening sparked grass fire racing across an August field. At its best, it is wild, exhuberant, cleansing, a spree of energy and near-demonic glee. At its worst it leaves me weeping, shuddering, nauseated, drained, rocking myself and mumbling, "I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay..." in a vain attempt to force myself to believe that I truly am okay. I am happy to declare that the manic, gleeful episodes far outpace the weeping. And the mania seems to be stepping to the fore as the dominant spaz attack.
    I do try to view the nauseatingly violent weeping as the price, the pennance, the pound of flesh that I pay for the riotous glee, joyful whirlwind, cleansing firestorm, exhilirating mania. I do love my mania, even when I know its potential to spook and panic those around me. The mania is a darling favorite in the melange that is me. The mania may rob me of caution, concentration, focus, and tact but it fills me with an effervescence, spurs me forward, lowers my inhibitions. My mania allows me to feel emboldened to say what might never be said, to leap without looking, to reach for forbidden fruit, to ride the whirlwind. My mania gives me emotional strength and physical stamina. But to the unsuspecting, the unprepared, the uninitiated, seen from the outside my Mania can be alarming, disconcerting, even frightening. I may be perceived as overwhelming and out of control. And maybe I am. A bit. But it is me. It is who I am. I am a Spaz Attack waiting to happen, and ready to enjoy every minute of it.