Me and the Swing

     Part of my personality is revealed in its swings and shifts in emotion.  On my down swing I am distant and lonely.   I wear my emotions close to the surface and on my sleeves.  I tend to create my best drawings and most memorable poetry and writings during this time, but I am also the most difficult to be around, constantly wounded, quiet, and self isolating.
     On my upswings I am loud and filled with laughter and wit, sarcasm and humor.  Again I can be difficult to be around but it is a lot more fun.  I am not bi-polar as that suggests an extreme of two opposites.  I am the Swing and experience life at every level of the sway.  The exhilaration in the pit of my stomach on the downward drop, smiling and contemplating as life sweeps farther away from my vision, the full height on the backward motion where I can see the lowest point of the ground I just dipped past.  The pause as inertia and gravity wrestle with each other.  It’s here I write, contemplate, compose poems, draw, and then gravity wins and I zip past where I was as I was in deep speculation about life, and then I am thrust upward towards that life, the wind rushing into my face, circumstances and events zooming towards me and I am plunging forward through them all, with a huge smile on my face, laughing, yelling out with all of my lungs “OWWW  OOOOU!” Let life hear my roar, and laughter, and see my heaven-turned gaze.  Then before I launch to the skies, inertia and gravity shake hands for their duel once again.  I ponder on the heights where I am suspended momentarily caught in history’s embrace.  I think of the wind and fun filled, adrenaline saturated life that I have just flown through, and the swing falls backwards again.  Just as exhilarating, just as fun, just as worthy of an experience as the counter-swing, and just as necessary to get me to be able to come forward even higher next time.
     It’s not a medically curable disease.  It’s life that is worth every single swing, wherever I am at in the sway, forward, back, up or down, laughing loud or ponderingly silent, fearful for the plunge or anticipating with childish grin the rush into the fray.  To stop the swing is to sit alone on the playground needing a push.  If I find myself in such a sad place, I pick up a pen, find some paper and before long my legs are pumping back and forth and momentum is gained, the swing is in motion and I’m happy again. 
     Please don’t be afraid by how fast or how high I’m swinging.  I’m not leaping off, the swing is too fun.  And guess what?  There’s an open one beside me.  Hop on and we’ll see who swings higher!  It’ll be fun!