To Madness and Back - Page 6
© John McManamy
These days, thanks to medications and talking therapy and a strict diet and exercise and sleeping regime, I have declared an uneasy truce with my disorder. I have learned to live with this beast inside me, even with the knowledge that it could very well bring me down at a moment's notice and show me no mercy. It has taken me into faraway places and endowed me with near-mystical qualities and insights plus real-world wisdom and skills. It has brought me closer to God and myself and my fellow human beings. But it has also reduced me to nothing and taken away everything I had. It has left me for dead, powerless to fight, feeling abandoned by both God and man.
And so I must accept what I am, the bad as well as the good, the ridiculous as well as the sublime. Maybe then, in my own way that is unique to me, I can feel as though I fit in. Maybe then, after nearly a lifetime of feeling different, I can say for the first time - and say it like I really mean it - that I am truly normal.
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