Mental Obscurity:

I am sorry it has been awhile since wrote anything. As if the continuous battle that rages in my mind is not enough, many other things involving family and my health joins forces against me and at times - the ever present symptoms of my illness - leaves me wandering if I am equipped enough to fight this battle. If it were an earlier time in my life I would most assuredly have surrendered by now. With everything going on, writing was virtually impossible. Some people in my situation can, but I find it very difficult.

I often think back of the poets, writers and artists who many years ago battled the same condition I am in, and now, just for a fleeting second can relate to how they wanted so badly...and some did...go off the medicine because the miss the "highs" when they were the most creative. As my condition changes, the mild highs come very quickly, and disappear almost as fast as they can and then the grey, mood sweeps in. In between the mixed state is constant; never knowing what I will feel from one second to the next.

One must remember that in the last twenty years or so this illness has drawn more and more attention, but it is not a disease that has just recently came upon us. As far back as 1751 Richard Mead wrote:

"Medical writers distinguish two kinds of Madness, and describe them both as a constant disorder of the mind without any considerable fever, but with this difference, that the one is attended with audaciousness and fury, the other with sadness and fear: and that they call mania, this melancholy. But these generally differ in degree only. For melancholy very frequently changes, sooner or later, into maniacal madness; and, when the fury is abated, the sadness generally returns heavier than before."

It seems Mead might have been talking about me when he wrote that. There are many things I want to write about, and I will, when I can. In the meantime, I am trying to..."hang in there."

"My Mind"