When your imagination turns on itself....

I have a very vivid imagination, probably from a childhood of being isolated and having to entertain myself and years of a lot of reading. Most of the time this is a blessing; I am creative, can think outside the box, tell a good story, find humor where most people miss it, and I am open-minded. Of course, most gifts are curses too and this is no exception. I have always [half] joked that I was going to go complete bat-shit insane one day but I guess there's some scientific truth to it. I recently read an article saying that studies were finding links between creativity and insanity, starting with the fact that most of the greatest artists in history were also notoriously unstable. Not to say that I fancy myself as one of the world's greatest anythings, not now or later, but I get the whole instability link. While I try to be more open to sharing the gift side, I only give peeks into the darker side. I don't know if that helps everyone else or just hurts me in the end because sometimes I literally feel like I'm physically and mentally cracking. Sometimes when I close my eyes I see a macabre montage of grainy black & white images flashing. And no, I'm not lucky enough to see normal macabre, like skulls, etc...no, I just see non-descript forms and blurbs like a Rorschach Test that got caught in a house fire. Everything just cracking and melting and warping and bleeding black everywhere and I can't even catch the images long enough to focus and attempt to make sense of them. I usually end up just opening my eyes because if I don't I'll start to feel like a scream is clawing up my throat. And the day I just start screaming at least if you read this you'll know why, but I'd suggest you just roll me into my padded room because by then I'm sure Tanya won't be here anymore. Good times...