Observations placeholder

The Maniac – A Realistic Study of Madness from the Maniac’s Point of View – E Thelmar

Finding nothing was coming I got up and was walking across the room to throw myself again upon the bed to sob, when suddenly thousands of mad voices commenced yelling in my ears.

What those voices are like defies description. No human being, who has not actually experienced it, can imagine such hell-torment.

The voices seemed to be legion, and each separate voice felt like a charge of dynamite exploding in my head, rending and shattering the living substance of my brain. I stopped dead-short in the centre of the room, held my head between my two hands (for my very skull felt as if being blasted), and said aloud, quite quietly and slowly, these exact words-

"My God! This awful thing that has happened to me has sent me stark, staring mad! This is unmistakably madness. And yet I am sane enough to know that I am mad, and I shall do nothing that these voices are yelling at me to do. I shall go and have a good square meal, for it is my belief that one half of this is sheer starvation."

It was midday, and I had not had a morsel of food. In a perfect agony of mind and body, and with those screaming voices still shattering my brain, I finished my dressing, I hastily twisted up my hair and pinned it; I put on my dress, and hunted about for a lace tie and a brooch to finish it off I thought-

"I must compose myself and dress myself properly; if I go out looking as wild as I am feeling, I shall attract every one's attention, and perhaps be taken up in the street as a madwoman before I have had time to get to the bottom of all this. I mean to live and get to the bottom of this."

Gradually the worst paroxysm of those voices passed off and there remained only about three or four shouting at me and telling me to do different things.