Oh those fleeting thoughts. How they do so invade my mind. At times I feel as though there are a thousand people living inside my head, all talking at once, telling me what to say and how to say it. Studying my course work becomes extremely difficult. While my own inner voice is reading the words of a text, I must sift that main voice out from all the others. Bipolars typically have fleeting thought patterns and they are in a word, a pain.

Even when I’m hypomanic, these multitudes of thoughts are twisting in and out of my conscious thoughts and trying to carry on a conversation becomes an ordeal in and of itself. Try focusing on someone else’s voice while in your head you are hearing hundreds. Bipolars are also known to interject into someone else’s conversation. I have not figured out if this is because I truly have something worthwhile to say or that I am just fearful that I will forget what it is I have to say.

Most of the times the fleeting thought have nothing whatsoever to do with my conversations with others. But there are times, especially in school, when I have so many ideas and opinions that when I do try to verbally express them, they come out sounding like mish mash. Not very impressive to say the least.

Fleeting thoughts are also known as “racing thoughts” and generally come equipped with rapid speech. I’ve always been a “fast talker” and this just compounds the problem. I have left coworkers completely puzzled when I’ve made an attempt to explain to them some sort of complexity. It always makes perfect sense to me but apparently not to anyone else. That’s because in my mind’s eye I see exactly what it is I’m trying to convey. It is just the translation from my mind to my mouth that everything seems to get screwed up.

I’ve been accused of not being able to communicate “normally” like other people. I happen to think I communicate quite well. I’ve never been shy and can carry on a conversation with anyone anywhere, unless I’m in the depressive cycle. If I’m down, even my racing thoughts shun me.

Many of my racing thoughts are paranoid in nature. What if what I have to say is thought to be silly or unimportant? What if I’m making absolutely no sense at all to my fellow conversationalist? What if, God forbid, I am making a huge fool of myself? Then the other voices will kick in and assure me that I am doing a marvelous job and if my point is mistaken, then it surely must be the fault of the person to whom I am talking.

My creative side tends to come out during these mental thought races. Plans to do this and that are begun and usually finished albeit later than planned. I have had loved ones look at me as if I’ve grown three heads which tells me I’m babbling and not making any sense. It’s just so frustrating to have so many things to say and not be physically able to say them. Worse than that is the fact once I start my rapid babble, I begin to stutter because the words can’t come out fast enough for my mouth to form the syllables.

When I am in a full blown manic episode, good Lord avoid me like a plague of locusts for I will babble on endlessly irregardless if you want to hear what I have to say. Hell, I’ll even talk to myself while spouting my newly formed ideas and plans. Most of those close to me have learned to deal with this symptom of Bipolar Disorder. While it can be a fun time of a cycle, it can also be a frustrating and irritating one to those around me.

It is these nonstop fleeting thoughts that cause my insomnia for which I now have medication. They are also the stimulus for the horrible nightmares that I experience whenever I forget to take my nighttime Zyprexa. The Zyprexa is a godsend in that it allows me to hush those voices and helps make sure that my mind doesn’t remember all the horrors of my nightmares.

One of these days, I’m going to go for it and stop the Zyprexa and keep a pad by my bedside and write down ever event and the dialogue that comes from my monstrous nightmares. I’ll put them all together in a novel that will scare even Steven King and make his stories look like Grimm’s Fairy Tales.