I'm bipolar, and for four years and a half, I've been struggling with a bloody plague that fills me with spots every day and tortures me until nightfall. And no, my opinions don't change from one day to another. Mania, the time of supernatural and artificial happiness, lasts for weeks. Then, for months I am being held hostage by debilitating depression, with nine pills a day. This is my life, purgatory or death, somehow I lived. A life lived with dignity and thrill. How else can you resist being held captive by your own mind?
(Translated by Iuliana Danciu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In March 2021, the group has 4.300 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficţiuni Reale. 
