Free Tristimania by Jay Griffiths

precious experience of finding oneself porous to the world. It can thus be a spiritual experience and an artistic one. Keats’s famous ‘negative capability’ comes close to explaining this feeling that the psyche’s skin is transparent, and the psyche of others can seem so. It is a glorious trespass, weirdly observant, and often correctly intuitive, steeped in deep empathy, a fellow-feeling. Empathy, incidentally, is one of the key markers of manic depression identified by Darian Leader. No wonder so many people feeling manic and hypomanic want to have sex with loads of people, but that is so literal and therefore not as interesting as this extensive, metaphysical love, not crudely ‘making love’ but rather noticing the love surrounding every human, every animal, the transcendent betweenness.
    A friend was ill, with a breast cancer scare, and wanted me with her for some of the treatment, and we choreographed a dance of mutual care. I went to see her in London. But on the train I found myself desperately trying not to scream. I wanted to get off the train and do – what, exactly? Bizarrely, of all things, I wanted to find a policeman and ask for help. As if I needed someone else’s power, and my mind suddenly read ‘power’ literally. I had no idea what I would have asked them to do – call a doctor? Take me home? Holdmy hand? Tell me a joke? What? I do not know. All of the above would have been helpful, but I was scared of their reaction. Transport police are in fact accustomed to coping with people who are experiencing psychiatric problems, and are trained to deal with them. Sorry, Officer, it’s a bit of an emergency . . . I need you to tell me a good joke. Yes, I know how absurd that sounds, but it felt as if a joke could create a sane link between my mind and someone else’s more quickly than anything else.
    Once I’d got to London, I had a soaring moment when I wanted to take my shoes off and run across the city, barefoot and naked, as if by doing so I could join myself to the roaring and jubilant pandemonium of cityness. My voice of reason stepped in firmly, quoting that familiar line: ‘The thing about inviting trouble is that trouble usually accepts.’ But I wanted to hold on to the spirit of that wish, the racing of naked flame without the embarrassment (and dangerous stupidity) of its actualization. On a bus going to my friend’s house, I watched a father with his three young children, and I felt a wave of utter love for them all, creatures as we all are of fire and love and need and hope. This sensual fire connects – one’s ardour easily sets another’s alight – but I wanted to let it run to the ethereal rather than the corporeal until I could cry out to the sky itself that I loved it.
    I was with my friend at a hospital appointment post-surgery. I was meant to be there as her Sensible Friend. (Ahem.) Trying with all my might to stay engaged, I managed to jot down the right questions we needed to ask and even get the answers. We came to the crucial appointment when she was told she was in the clear. She went into a shocked state of vertiginous relief. In the moment of delight and love, I slipped on a mental banana skin and fell into cartoon: Desperate Dan unleashed in Vizland. Hullabaloo – like a rubberboomerang made of chewing gum and powered by farts – exploded in my mind, and I started giggling terribly. One of the nurses was looking at me uneasily. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I gasped, ‘my friend’s just had breast cancer and I’m hypomanic, so we’re both off our tits.’
    Then my friend lost her umbrella and I lost her. It only lasted a few minutes, but it was as disturbing as a dream where everything is almost exactly as you know it to be, but with the crucial bit (my friend) entirely missing. When we found each other, we went out for lunch to celebrate her results and, although she was