My wife doesn’t understand my fascination with Hunter Thompson. There are only a select few who do.

What most people don’t understand is that living with manic bipolar is living with Hunter inside your head every day. Raging. Screaming. Shooting at the peacocks while the sun rises. Spraying my optic nerve with a rogue fire extinguisher. Delivering calla lilies to soothe me when he has stepped over the line, laughing at me, with me, simultaneously.

That screaming vitality that HST lived every single day is bottled inside me, caged, rattling the bars, threatening to call a 450-pound Maori solicitor to beat some logic into my skull, from the inside out. The highly-attuned vision. Echoing sounds of madness. Inability to pay attention to the droning emptiness of my work life.

Some would call this a nightmare. Some days I do. Most days, I rock back on my heels, scratch my chin, grin, and smile. I know that the world around me is always in his sights, ranting, providing a constant commentary, arms waving manically, Chivas spilling on my synapses, another typewriter brutally blasted in the snow.

Hunter is the model of what rages inside me. The echo of a life restrained, held in check. Cursing the days lost.