I don’t particularly have a visual imagination; I tend to think in word clouds. But sometimes, I’ll be able to compare how I feel to something; an image, a still-frame photograph, a hanging painting that just sits for a moment surrounded by the feeling.
When I was back on anti-depressants, coping with a new job, struggling with the end of my marriage… a chandelier of broken glass, hanging shards; the darker coated ones turned away from the light, the brighter ones glinting: false, brittle, glinting.
Being on new tablets that had something odd in them, which sent me manic for about a week; a metallic cylinder in my chest, tinted and brittle, coating everything.
Everything piling up: layers of thin board, stacking and stacking, weighing down but not yet breaking.
And the feeling of pills that I knew would sink me: a helium balloon filling my chest, raising me – and an iron weight on it, pushing down, not letting me rise, not letting the happiness bubble.
And six months of happiness in Oxford… A golden fountain, bubbling and roiling, sending whirls upwards: light and lifting and wonderful.