“I have been wondering, mostly, if love and sanity are the same thing. When I say I am in love I am also saying the world makes sense to me right now.”
-Neil Hilborn, Our Numbered Days
Today’s LitBowl prompt is inspired by this quote from Neil Hilborn’s book, Our Numbered Days. For more inspiration, get the book below!
Prompt: Write about the relationship between love and sanity from the perspective of the person in love. If being in love makes you sane, is falling out of love the same thing as being insane? Additionally, love can make people do things that seem “insane” from an outside perspective. Write about how one person’s sanity can be another’s insanity, or vice versa.
Feel free to respond in the comments below! We’ve been loving the responses we’ve received to the our prompts so far, and we can’t wait to see what all of you keep writing.
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Today’s writing prompt courtesy of Ben Barnhart.
“What?!” Jess exclaimed. “That’s the third girl this week!”
“I know,” Eleanor responded somberly, “and one guy last Sunday.”
It was inexplicable, everyone said. The virus had no preference of gender, age, race. One day a man would be at work or at the bar or the library and would simply stop what he was doing, find the highest point he could find, and jump. Science had no answer, other than that it was a strange neurological reaction.
Jess never tried to understand it, only that those people must have been sick or confused. She went about her days without looking up and around at the world, living a watery gray life with no reason to think there was anything more, until the day.
The day she found him.
They locked eyes and suddenly, she looked up and vibrant colors shot through the sky, purple and pink and orange and green. Nothing had ever been more clear to her: she wanted to live in this kaleidoscope. How could she not have seen before?
Jess found the tallest building in the city. She stood on its roof, the biting wind running its teeth through her hair and scampering playfully away, while she lifted her arms and leaned closer to the edge. Tears dropped from her eyes like the most sparkling, blessed stars as she gazed above herself, there was nothing below, there was no need to fear… She sprang into the air and smiled as the colors wrapped around her, through her, giving her wings and she knew in that moment.
No one ever actually fell. They flew.
Love this!
Thanks for posting your story! 🙂
no one really knows about boundaries, not when the finish line looks like the final untouched resting ground for dreams. I see your face pressed into cerulean scenes -angry ones, seemingly harmless memories only they’re the kind that keep you far from me. I search for a philosophy with you, some unquestionable set of values to be laid before me. wouldn’t it be pura vida going about without any cynicism lingering in our conversations? sooner or later, describing this incessant longing I have for your body’s lithe movement will become the only reasonable choice. the only logical solution to whatever trouble sits with us at the kitchen table and asks for more. more sadness drilling itself into us and more furious furniture moving until I remove the permanent imprint of your footprints from my floors. when you cross the street without looking for a return address, I’ll expect it even though it leaves me wounded and reeling from hopeless hopefulness. you’re the do-gooder explaining that Catalonia deserves the right to be free, no matter what yet you leave the front door locked on Thursday night because I’m not worth a depressing trip down to memory lane. but I forgive you for setting yourself free from the beginning of an end before I could give you another promise. you deserve to know that sanity was lying beside you on queen size bed and recognising myself as the only shadow in the room. the only out of place object taking up too much space in your loft. when you left, I found that I was better suited as the last glimpse of yellow at a stoplight before wheels off.
Thank you for sharing your writing!
My sanity is something stale and easily broken into pieces and I find contentment in my insanity, or living on the brink thereof. But when in love I want to step off that ledge. I guess I’m jumping off a ledge on the other side straight into the persons arms hoping that they have a parachute or we’re going to be crushed so maybe love and sanity or lack of love and insanity are not synonymous but they are just two different types of breaking. One where you crumble apart and the world watches you, and one where you’re together which means you’ll also crumble together. And the world could spontaneously combust and you wouldn’t even notice. And so I guess it doesn’t matter whether we are all sane or insane because one is still mental illness, it’s just not being alone with your mental illness
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing your words!