Mad as a Hatter

I have something to get off my chest.

Oh, and don’t feel obliged to listen.  I can rattle on for ages given half a chance.

The thing is, I’ve just realised that instead of being someone with rather erratic moods, I seem to now have two distinct and disparate personalities, which come and go.  What’s more they appear to be diverging.  One of me is totally calm, logical, and the other is quite the opposite.

As long as I have my sensible head on I can cope with anything, but when the emotional side rears its ugly head people should really run for cover.   Worzel Gummidge, a fictional scarecrow character from my childhood days, had different heads for different occasions.  The difference with me is I don’t seem to be able to choose which one to wear at any given time.  They come and go as they please.

I believe that the concept of multiple personality disorder is now regarded as just plain wrong so I won’t even consider that as an option but I do wonder what’s happening to me, and why it’s happening now.  Could it be some sort of bi-polar thing, I wonder, becoming more obvious with age. Are the two halves of my brain, the male and female sides, coming unglued?  An interesting prospect.

As you can no doubt tell, I have my sensible head on as I write this, or it would be full of doom and gloom and possibly even profanities.  And yet, as a recent comment shows, a piece written in that phase has been called possibly my best work.   It’s hard to know what to make of that.  Many artists have been disturbed in some way, I know, mad as hatters, some of them, so I should probably thank my lucky stars and just get on with it.

They do say that genius is just a hop, skip and a jump away from madness of course, which is a comforting thought.  I think.

Oh, it’s no use telling me to ask my doctor.  He would probably raise an eyebrow and give me a verbal pat on the head.  He’s like that.  Very nice man but not terribly understanding.  I’ve pretty much given up going to see him at all.  Waste of time on the whole. 

No, yet again I’ll do some research, see what the so-called experts have to say.

It’s all very odd, yet fascinating, watching it happen.  It’s at times like this that I’m relieved to live alone.  There isn’t anyone to drive up the wall.  I can be as odd as I like and there’s no-one to see it.  Thankfully.

Aren’t you lucky to have such a fascinating creature in your midst? Don’t answer that.  It was rhetorical.  I just feel I have to justify my existence somehow.  

But anyway. I was thinking, I’ve become rather comfortable in my body recently so why be selfish about it? Why not move over and allow two of me to inhabit it.  It seems to be working so far.  Sort of.  And if the unruly person in me becomes too outrageous I have no doubt someone will do something.

Just don’t put me back on the psych ward. Please! The place is full of loonies. 


©March 2007

It is now 2013 and you may or may not be pleased to hear that I am considerably more stable these days.