"Please sit down, I begged my neighbour, who was leaning across the car gearstick, arm stretched around my headrest. My pleas for him to fasten his seatbelt were futile. Now he was jigging about, gesticulating wildly as he revealed his latest plans. He had told me before about the script he was writing for Gary Oldman. I hadn't thought too much of it, then all writers have to be a bit grandiose, I had reasoned, otherwise they wouldn't achieve anything."
"I looked in the mirror, and instead of hating my reflection, as I had for the months previously, I was suddenly glowing with positivity. How lovely, I reasoned; after several years of severe depression, I must have turned a corner. Except it was more of a sharp bend. I hadn't exercised for months, but that morning I practically sprang out of bed and announced that I was going for a run. When it ended, I set off again."
A neighbour displays grandiose, risky behaviour—leaning across a car without fastening a seatbelt, describing a flying-machine stunt and claiming to write a script for Gary Oldman. He arrives demanding expensive wine and an extensive Tesco shopping list despite having no money, so the narrator and partner compromise with limited purchases and a taxi offer. The neighbour grows quiet and eventually moves away. Years after severe depression, the narrator experiences an abrupt surge of energy and positivity, running repeatedly and feeling unusually productive. The narrator concludes that high moods can be as dangerous as low ones and that self-care rarely warns about manic productivity.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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