The Nature of Beasts

The Nature of Beasts

            I had never expected madness to feel so exhilarating.

            It would start, this feeling, like butterflies in my stomach. These were little razor-edged butterflies; shining swarms of them shimmering in my gut, rising to my heart. I would close my eyes and wait. Soon, the electricity made by the tiny butterflies would be pulsing through my veins, sparkling in my blood, and shooting through my heart. I’d sit quietly for a few minutes, just enjoying the feeling of being alive; of being truly, fully, unapologetically alive.

            But the madness would reveal itself in due time. Until then, I was a proudly productive student.

I had spent the last weeks in a mercurial frenzy. I worked two part-time jobs by then, and went to school full-time. Rising at 5:00 AM, hitting the bed at 2:00AM, and some days there was no sleeping. I didn’t feel lack of energy, however. Hardly eating, I just kept going like that damned Energizer bunny.

I’d stare at the moon when I couldn’t sleep. Unblinking, I’d stare into the beautiful white pearl looming in the sky. I could feel its pull on my bones. The wildness of the moon called to me, somehow. I would sit wherever I was with an impassive face, reveling secretly in the natural high that rushed through me. I would lick my lips, feeling the crackle of lightening with its taste of white copper on my tongue. My hair would rise on end all over my body and I would shiver with delight.

As the weeks wore on, however, there were brief moments that would sporadically appear during these nights that bled into days. I would crash. Hard. Finding myself suddenly and more often in my University parking lot skipping a class because I could not stop crying, I knew something was wrong.

But an hour or two would pass, and I’d be happier than I was before. Dismissing the moments of weakness, I would plunge ahead into deeper waters, still. These waters were wilder, rougher, and bowed to the rhythms of the moon. Soon, I would be dancing to the push and pull of the tides, too.

I didn’t want to think about that, though. I didn’t want to think about the moon. I had goals, man. Unless it helped me reach those goals, everything else could be dealt with later. After all, the moon, in all its awe-inspiring might, could be tucked away neatly underneath my thumb when I held my hand up to the sky.

My energy was at an all-time high, and funneled into my schoolwork. But something odd began to occur. My thoughts became expansive and grand, linking together subjects and topics that had little real connection. My speech became faster, more assertive, and tangential. The tides were high. I was already waist-deep in water I didn’t know I was in.

Then suddenly, one moonlit night, I heard them again. I hadn’t for three years, even though I had heard them all my life. The voices were back. The wretched screams when no one was around had returned.

Quickly, my energy began to take a twisted, dark turn. I began to feel irritable. Insatiable. Unsatisfied. Reason was beginning to slip away more noticeably. At least, others noticed.

But it is in the nature of beasts never to show weaknesses. And that’s what I was becoming. A raging wounded animal guided by impassive moon beams.

People say to trust your instincts. Mine were tied to the moon; the moon of nighttime, the moon of virgins, the moon of lovers, and the moon of lunatics. When you try to stifle your instincts, they come back to suffocate you.