It’s October 2006…
(If you have your copy of the album ‘Fallen’ handy, skip along to track 6 – it’s what I was listening to in a room lit with twenty four candles when I started writing the following rough scene breakdown for my novel ‘All Things Must Change’ - aka - “The Ghosts that Haunt Us”)
A Dorchadas
“If you don’t shut your f*****g mouth you stuck up spoiled c**t I swear to god I’ll come over there, rip out your tongue and force you to perform wild c*********s on yourself whilst I s***w you up the a** with my sword!
Now, where was I? Ah yes…”
Leaving Elizabeth speechless Jeremy turned with a casual pirouette and cracked his fist into Katherine’s face - sending her slamming with a cry into the soft, rain sodden mud. He followed it up with a sharp kick to her stomach. Leaning down he grabbed her hair and hauled her to her feet before burying his knee into her stomach, and again into her face, before permitting her to collapse once again into the mud; her deep red blood gushing.
He takes a few steps back, wiping some of Katherine’s blood from his lips with his sleeve. Shooting his head around to check on Elizabeth she stands staring in disbelief, her body shaking with fear and anger. Her lips move, words hovering on the brink of becoming before she stops herself, sinking to her knees and bowing her head.
Jeremy smiles, turning his attention to the fallen Katherine, he paces around her bloodied body, smiling. She rolls slowly onto her back and blinks her eyes open. When she opens her mouth to speak, the words come out, barely a whisper, holding none of the power and grace they usually would.
“Is…”She coughs, blood spitting down her chin. “…is…that all ya got?”
With great pain she sits up, leaning on her arms, raising her eyes to stare at the pacing Jeremy. They follow him as he walks slowly around her.
(…and it was right about here that I took a small knife and sliced the one part of my body I knew my girlfriend wouldn’t see…)
From far above a flash of lightning streaks across the night sky followed by a deep guttural roar of thunder as the rain increases, drenching the three below.
“I’m sorry…about…” Again she coughs. “…what happened to Amber,”
With a fiery speed Jeremy whips down and grabs her throat, squeezing, crushing it with his bloodied hands. “Once more!”
“Am…ber,” Her eyes stare directly at his, trying to catch a tiny glimmer of the man she knew. The man she loved. The man buried beneath a screen of darkness, grief and despair. “Amber.” She repeats, and there, a spark ignites.
She catches sight of it moments before she is hauled into the air, gasping for breath, her lungs grasping for air as he carries her with speed by the neck through the darkness. With force he slams her hard against a tree and she hears her shoulder bone crunch under the pressure. She screams, forced back into her throat by his grip so that all that comes out is a silence.
Jeremy releases his grip and lets her collapse to the floor, her right arm hanging limp from her broken shoulder, her neck bruised purple as she fights to refill her lungs.
“Say her name again and you’ll be sorry!”
“Will I..Shay …mi escosesito lindo …” She coughs, spitting the blood to her side. “I can still see you in there. Whatever you’re feeling…”
He slaps her hard across the face.
“Whatever darkness is eating you up…”
He slaps her again.
“Whatever pain is ripping through you…”
And again.
(…and it was right about here that I took that same small knife and once again sliced the one part of my body I knew my girlfriend wouldn’t see…)
“I will always love you, Mi escosesito lindo…do what you need to…”
And again.
“But remember…I loved her too.”
And again.
“Amber.”
A final slap and Jeremy in one swift movement spins around, rips his Luchair from his back, and slams the wooden staff hard against Katherine’s face which knocks her hard to the ground, her face and mouth buried in the mud. He cracks the wood against her back, shattering her collar bone. He drives the end of it straight down onto the back of her knee, destroying the joint with a thunder muffled crack.
Whipping a knife from his boot he drives it into her thigh, the blade cutting deep into her flesh, her scream stolen by the storms wind.
Another spike of lightning, her deep red blood spilling onto the earth.
(…and it was right about here that my own blood was spilling onto a rag I kept handy…)
Leaving the blade deep inside her Jeremy spins her around, the pressure of the ground on the knife’s hilt forcing it deeper into her leg, slicing more flesh, scraping the bone. Her screams echo into the sky, mixing with the thunder which howls back in response.
“Don’t ever…ever fucking say her name again. Hear me bitch!”
(…and it was right about here that just as I was about to cut myself again I received a text message inviting me out. My girlfriend had been at her work’s staff meeting, they had then all traveled to a ten pin bowling alley, and I was being invited to join them in their drinking festivities. I cut myself again, not as deep, and replied. After patching myself up I went out to meet them, walking a little uncomfortably for reasons you’d understand if you’ve been able to figure out the part of the body very few people in fact ever actually see)
What has all these badly written fiction got to do with a manic phase? I hear you ask.
Well, the above is an exchange which takes place between two of my most personally loved characters – Shay and Katherine. They have been friends for a looonnnggggg time, and here, for reasons way to complicated to go into given the fact I’d have to go into the intricacies of novel’s plot, Shay has undergone a change in personality and is in the process of – well – causing rather a lot of pain to Katherine, the woman he loves, his best friend. I’ve cut the above just before the most brutal and upsetting sequence I’ve ever written. In fact, as I wrote in rather hefty detail how Shay proceeded to beat, rape and murder Katherine I was not only shaking myself but also shedding rather a hefty lot of tears in the process. Generally my stuff only gets dark when it needs to, and at this point in the story this needs to happen - it needed to be the nastiest murder you can possibly imagine. So imagine that, and then multiply it by a thousand, imagine the person you love is doing it to you, and then multiply it by a thousand again; that’ll get you close to how nasty and brutal this scene gets.
The reason this scene was so painfully emotional for me to write was because:
(a) Shay is based on me
(b) Katherine was inspired (in part) by Rachel
and no matter how selfish and evil people think I am, I never want to believe I am capable of being like this.
So, again, what the frack has this got to do with a manic phase? I hear you shrieking!
Simple. When I’m manic – I’m very much like Shay.
You see to understand my manic phase you have to understand who I am when I’m manic – because I’m not Addy, oh nosiree Bob! When I’m manic there are only two ways to describe me: immortal and god.
When I’m manic I can; have anything I want, do anything I want, have anyone I want and do anyone I want. If I were to jump in front of a train, it would be the train that would need to be rushed to hospital – as I’d be too busy tangoing down the tracks with a couple of passengers along for the ride.
So with that in mind let’s skip on eight months…
…into June 2007. Adelaide. Where things were about to get very interesting!
Or were they…?
You see, looking back on that time in my life, my manic phase actually began it’s gestation before Adelaide. My sudden decision to leave Melbourne was classic manic depression; ill thought out, ill prepared, ill planned. An evening of unabashed drinking at the Sherlock Holmes pub on Collins Street following a day at the hospital which had filled me with antibiotics, anesthetic and god knows what other medical concoctions was perhaps not the best thing to do. Alcohol and medication never mix. Yet alcohol and mania seem to go together like cheese and biscuits, cheese and chips, hell, cheese and anything! Everything I had been doing for those two weeks before I left Melbourne makes me think more and more that my mania had already started, it just didn’t truly explode out of me until a few weeks later…
…when we duck ever so quickly back into June 2007. Two members of my family are in hospital, one after a suicide attempt. I have no-one I can talk to about how this is making me feel, I have no money, most of my possessions have been stolen, and I’m spending an awful lot of time under a very friendly tree near the Torrens. My mind and emotions are in tatters and all I want is a friend to talk to. Just as things can’t get any worse I suddenly start receiving emails from my ex which escalate as the week progresses into full on abuse over things which I had been asked (by her) to do – which I had done – and was now being abused for in text for actually doing. This was WAY too much. I snapped. I eradicated all forms of communication (i.e. email address and phone) and - as previously mentioned in earlier posts - I lost what little control I had left of my mind; self harming nastily with knife, belt and the aforementioned “friendly” tree.
The next day I wasn’t quite the same. It wasn’t concussion, or a result of the injuries, as I’d had all of them checked out. It was that I woke up feeling completely different; restless, agitated whenever I was sitting still, I need to do something anything and from this point on things get a little difficult to write about – not only because some of my actions were far from suitable for a family audience, but because I don’t remember everything that I did.
(One of the most commonly asked questions from psychologists, doctors and the mental health teams I have seen revolves around how my “friends” viewed this change in me. Commonly whilst in a manic phase you tend to not really remember all that much, which is why they ask about friends, as the people in your life will tend to notice things that are different. Or they should do. Hence, if I’d had friends at the time I probably wouldn’t be finding it so hard to obtain treatment as not a single person I’ve ever met would have been able to be around me at that time without noticing I wasn’t really myself)
The most remembered events of this period were as follows and may or may not have happened in the order listed below (blame my Swiss cheese mind for that one!)
- After dressing up for a night on the town in a whole new get up obtained from Hindley Street, I walked into a bar in this same street, and sussed the place out. It wasn’t a bad wee joint, not too crowded, people seemed okay. I saw something I liked – in this instance, the third tastiest butt I’d ever seen – walked over to it and slapped it rather heartily. To be honest the woman turned around and slapped me as hard as she could (good for her, so she should have done) but this didn’t stop me from introducing myself with a smile, commenting on the sexiness of her posterior without a beat and that she’d probably enjoyed the slap before buying her a drink without even asking if she wanted one. I grabbed a whisky, downed it in one, and proceeded to talk to her (whether she was looking at me or not) for about an hour and twenty minutes. Now, anyone who knows me should instantly be able to go – alrighty, hold on one wee minute, that pathetic little twat who never says anything to anyone talked to a stranger for over an hour and twenty minutes? – that doesn’t sound quite right. To which I would award them with a gold star, as it seriously doesn’t sound like Addy. But I wasn’t. I was someone else. All I cared about was the fact that the whisky was fine, her butt finer and the syllables escaping my mouth were – without any doubt or question in the world – the most entertaining, witty, important and downright had to be heard sentences anyone in the world had ever spoken ever! Plus, throughout that hour and twenty minutes; no pauses, no thought, no drinks; just me, talking, the entire time. Occasionally she would say something, try to turn around or walk away, but she was completely intoxicated by this incredibly strange guy who had slapped her ass, brought her a drink and was talking to her about really odd (overtly sexual) topics. So when I actually stopped talking she just laughed, for about three minutes, a fit which lasted until I had managed to get her wedged into a booth with me and as the laughter subsided she said “Hi, I’m Sammi,” to which I just said “Hi, I want you,” to which she burst into laughter again, a fit stopped seconds later when I planted a kiss on her. This kiss led to several (dozen) drinks and a whole lot of fun as I kept revving up the conversation to which she found herself having to hurdle sentences in order to keep up with. Upshot, we left the bar, completely rat-arsed, and ended up at the end of a fairly deserted Rundle Mall at God knows what time in the morning.
An earlier conversation had been about public nudity…hence the logical leap into public streaking…and within moments I found myself dashing naked through the streets, a couple of socks disappearing into the night air behind me before riding a metallic pig in the nuddy. Police sirens, a couple of cops, a mad dash through the streets trying to escape the ‘law’ saw us end up in a bush in some deserted ruddy cold park away from the CBD. Being in such a confined space, still, ummm, naked, she couldn’t help but see the various cuts and bruises on my body, not that we really talked about those as we had far more important things to do…which I do remember but on this occasion am going to keep totally sthum about. Definitely not for the public eye! Next day; shower at her hostel then just wandered off into the glaze of the Adelaidian sun…never saw her again aside from a couple of Facebook messages, that’s about it.
- Knowing absolutely nothing about AFL, I ended up conversing with a homeless man in Glenelg about the intricacies of the game, it’s players and general rowdy Aussie rules shenanigans for – oh, about three hours! Player’s names, teams, who did I care if they didn’t exist – this guy didn’t seem to know any different. I wanted to talk; he wanted company, so until I hit the pubs of Glenelg it passed the time. Yep, more pubs, and that night every drink was brought for me. It’s amazing what acting like an arrogant misogynistic prick actually does to women!
- As the days rolled on and the mood hit it’s stride I ended up striking up conversations with various people all over the place, some just wandered off, somewhat hesitant to talk to a random crazy person in the street, others would indulge me for a while and occasionally we’d end up heading off for the evening.
- A couple of nights I became a salsa dancing dynamo, another couple of nights were spent tangoing away on the banks of the Torrens with a bargirl from the casino who I had convinced to teach me to tango, in exchange for some lessons of my own.
- Whilst on one occasion, whilst in mid conversation, I jumped into the road to push someone out the way of an incoming lorry, and then once I’d made sure they were ok scolded them for not looking where they were going and then returned to the somewhat bemused person I’d been talking to.
It’s bloody hard writing about this phase of my life knowing that there may be people reading this that know me. I didn’t really know what was happening to me at the time; my mental faculties had runaway, my inhibitions had vanished, my confidence over flowing.
As I said earlier whatever I wanted, whoever I wanted, I would get. I was slapped a fair few times from annoyed women (again, good on you, I deserved it) but then Sammi’s arse wasn’t the only one I slapped during that time! As the phase rolled on my actions became, at times, more blasé and uncaring:
- A couple of books, some food and other miscellaneous smaller items were shoplifted.
- Plus, on one particular evening, I initiated a fight with someone in a bar in North Adelaide. The week before the mania hit I had gone in there hoping to strike up conversation and meet new people, something I did frequently all through the year – especially from mid February onwards. However, on this occasion, the friend of the person I had been trying to talk to didn’t seem to care much for my somewhat nervous social anxiety drenched attempts at conversation so – in an effort to rid me from his friend – heaved a full glass of beer over my head. Not quite the best thing to happen to someone suffering from social anxiety, whose confidence had already been knocked into near oblivion through months of emotional abuse. So, of course, feeling like the immortal god I was, I ventured back in the following week on the off chance this man was there. He was. I walked up to the bar, purchased a beer, walked across the room, and poured it over his head before punching him and walking out the bar. He followed, some fisty-kicky-heady-etc-cuffs ensued until his friends tore us apart and I vanished into the night. Or rather, a few yards down the street to another bar.
The manic phase was basically one long unending quest to (a) talk as much as I could to anyone who would listen (b) drink as much as I was able to convince people to buy for me (c) bed as many people as I could and (d) do whatever the hell I felt like doing!
I have said before that whilst manic I am the person Sally and Kathy always bitched at me for not being. Sounds like a blast, doesn’t it? Well it wasn’t! It was immensely frightening, scary and at times down-right dangerous. The things I remember doing, the things I remember saying - I’m incredibly lucky not to have ended up with serious injury and/or death – chatting up a woman in a bar is one thing, chatting up a woman in front of their boyfriend another! Running across a road is one thing; throwing yourself in front of a lorry to stop someone getting hit another!
Manic phases are incredibly dangerous beasts as although you have control over what you want to do, what you want to do is not generally what you should be doing. But that doesn’t really matter when you’re manic – immortal god remember, no inhibitions! The other danger with the manic phase was physical health related.
At the time I was still recovering from glandular fever due to the pressure and stress I had been under all year, so flagrant drinking and athletic activities were probably not the best thing to do. Especially given the damage my liver had suffered. The CLL, also, was not helped through this period – as it wasn’t through all of the emotional stress of last year.
The manic phase was dwindling the weekend I left for Melbourne, helped partly by the beautiful speeches of Gridlock and when I rolled into Ararat on my return journey found myself crashing out for the first time in what felt like weeks. My return to Melbourne was still drenched in mania and anger following the events of the last few months and aside from a trip to an interesting looking club on King Street and a meander to the storage depot to collect some of my items kept myself to myself as I had no idea what would happen were I to meet my ex-girlfriend at this stage, in this phase.
Now, earlier on I said how I became like Shay whilst manic. This is and will always be the case. I still however continue to believe that I am not a danger to others whilst manic, only myself. Granted I started a fight, but many guys have, and that doesn’t mean I’m a danger to others. I never intentionally set out to harm someone unless they consented to it, and – like I said – you have control over yourself whilst manic, just because your inhibitions are down doesn’t mean you’re going to become a crazed psychopathic killer. That’s not who I am, that’s not who I’ll ever be, and having experienced one manic phase I’m hesitant to want another – although in many ways I’m secretly hoping for one soon – due to the danger it presents to me both mentally and physically.
As I say, when I’m manic I’m the person Sally and Kathy always wanted me to be, and part of me seriously wants a manic phase to happen right now so I can have some fun for the first time since, well, June/July 2007. Given the fact, as I wrote in November last year, I know my triggers it would be easy to bring one on. The only problem is, next time I go manic (which I know will happen sooner rather than later) it’s gonna do me even more serious damage, especially given my current state.
Hence, why I am fighting so hard against the onslaught of incessant mood swings that plague me whilst keeping those tempting triggers at bay.
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