Bipolar

A life without pretence

When my friend died by suicide 11 years ago today I was so angry at him, furious, incredulous that he could do this to people. I thought all of the things that I know are damaging to say or hear in relation to mental illness and suicide. How could he do this, he’s so selfish. He’s got…

Six years to the day

“What colour is it? Pinot noir or Shiraz?” said the ambo trying to assess how much blood I’d lost.

Six years ago today, my life changed trajectory, a hook turn rather than a u-turn. Who knows where it would have gone if that night didn’t happen? Maybe I’d have kept…

The damage

My mental illness has a significant and lifelong impact on my life. It is potentially terminal, and while I was told I had depression my probability of suicide was around 5%, now with bipolar that number jumps to 25%. Plus people with bipolar are 20 times more likely to die by suicide than the general…

The language of feelings

Mental health conversations often revolve around feelings, and for me a lot of these conversations come back to me “having a lot of feelings”.

Which I do, and which everyone does (some people just don’t realise they’re there — that’s probably not good for…

Hello, my old friend

Here we are again, the weaning process. It’s a cruel joke that for anti-depressants to work it can take up to 6 weeks, when you start going off them you feel it immediately. You get a nice combo of a headache, some extra cotton mouth, losing your words, lack of energy, exhaustion, blurred…

Changing lanes

In the months before my bipolar 2 diagnosis I had been beginning to question what I was doing with my life — primarily when it came to my work. A few years in advertising and then moving to a global retailer had me thinking about whether I wanted to be in a world where all I did was sell things to…

The new normal

I was already sad, so when I received a bipolar diagnosis it wasn’t the sadness that I thought about. It was happiness. It was good moods, and energy, it was wondering whether a good day was actually a good day, or hypomania. When I felt good did I actually feel the ‘right’ kind of good?