Flashback Manic Episode #1 Almost Two Decades Ago:

First manic and most extreme one I ever had.

I spent hours on the phone calling my friends, at least the ones who actually bothered to answer the phones. Some just turned the answering machine on and ignored my calls, but one of my friends got angry with me when I called. 

Her reason?

She was angry because I sounded too nice. 

I called her and started talking about __________, a girl we both knew and didn’t like. I said that ____________ was actually a really nice person and had just had an extremely tough life. In reality, neither of my statements about the girl in question were all that truthful. She was the kind of girl who talked smack about anybody and everybody without good cause and who hadn’t had all that difficult of a time. 

My friend got angry. “You don’t like her. You told me you didn’t like her. What’s wrong with you?”

I couldn’t explain to her that everything seemed beautiful and that everyone was perfect just the way it was. She was obviously incapable of understanding the true depth of my feelings. She was just an engineer after all; maybe she was too scientific to understand exactly what I was feeling or going through. 

I continued to defend our mutual acquaintance. In retrospect, this was more than a little odd since she was not only someone that I didn’t like or respect all that much, she was someone that I rarely even thought about. For some reason during my manic episode, my mind had gotten stuck on that particular idea and I couldn’t let it go. 

It was also interesting that my friend wasn’t all that upset by my outlandish behavior, which had pushed more than a few envelopes, but was upset by what seemed a change in who I was. 

So, how did I feel about the mutual acquaintance after the meds took effect and I was no longer manic? 

Exactly the same as I had before. 

Whatever generosity I had felt towards my acquaintance as a result of my euphoria had faded away by the time I was feeling like my normal self. It goes without saying that this was a welcome relief to my friend who preferred me as a person who didn’t like everyone. While I strongly believe that I’ve learned alot from both my periods of mania and depression, I’m glad that I have the perspective in between my rare episodes so that I can judge whether or not I like people on my own terms.