Love, Mania & Holding Space

I kept losing him, but he always returned

Photo by Ehimetalor Unuabona on Unsplash

I have loved and lived intimately with someone who suffers from mania. Onsets would emerge with a nearly audible buzzing, detectable only by those familiar with his other day-to-day vibrations. Behaviour would change from a temperate desire to keep everything in its place, to devastating the house in an 8 hour blitz of — what looked like — utter…