The sexual part of mania is confusing. I read your story, @casheroo, and my first thought was that you were looking for love or for friends, and using sex as a proxy for those things. But then I thought about what happens for me—how this hole inside me seems to open up, and only love seems like it will fill it up, and I get to the point where there’s all this nervous energy inside me, and it just feels like I am constantly horny and constantly aroused. There is no amount of sex, at that time, that seems like it would be enough.
It’s scary looking at myself when that happens. I see what’s happening, and when I’m like that, opportunities come up, and I can’t turn them down. I feel like I need it so much. There’s never enough love. Never.
Intellectually, I know this isn’t true, but it feels true. You might think that any relationship started under such circumstances would be somewhat bogus. They might disappear when the mania and the depression end. That’s not my experience. Somehow, the feelings, which make me feel obsessed and passionate and creative—get focused on one person—usually someone new in my life, and then I am lost. It feels like I can’t breathe unless I feel this love, and send it out, and then feel the same thing coming back at me.
It confuses me, because it’s hard—maybe even impossible to sort out or make sense of reality. I would like to think that these feelings are just from the mania, but they are also more than that. They come from a deep place inside me, and they are an attempt to meet some deep need. The feelings are incredibly powerful, and even so, I feel like I should be able to control them, and not let anything get out of hand. But I haven’t been able to apply that control. And I fall in love, and then things get very, very complicated.