It's 7pm on an average Saturday evening, I'm watching Rocketman (because musicals make me happy) and eating a pork pie, yes, old school Ploughmans, don't worry I'm accompanying it with cucumber and some salted popcorn, I like to mix things up a little. I want to say it's been a turbulent and troublesome week but really it hasn't, mostly it's been filled with adventure and lots of walking.  Lots and lots of walking.  I saw the Kelpies, I went on the Falkirk Wheel, I took myself to the Botanic Gardens and felt happy as I walked, surrounded by nature feeling the sunshine on my skin the weather was colder than normal for this time of year.  

When I travel alone, I don't really get too many pangs of loneliness but I always wish I could share sunsets or beautiful vistas with someone special. It's taken me a long time in my life to find friends, I still struggle with the complexities of friendship, Abigail said to me, and quite rightly, that to be friends with me you have to understand that I see the world in a completely different way to everyone else.  I'd like to try and illustrate that but I can't because I've never lived that ordinary, neurotypical life.  I have wished on more than one occasion to just be like everyone else but no one has that magic wand and over the last couple of years, I've been increasingly interested in just trying to embrace all of my divergences and love myself more.

Look, this is as plainly as I can explain it but, on a good day my life is glorious technicolour, everything is vibrant, food tastes better, flowers smell amazing and I want to sing my way through the day (quite possibly why I love musicals so much).  I am confident that I have so many plans and ideas, and I can truly conquer the world.  On the good days, I am funny and great company to be with.  The flipside however is a dark and lonely place.  On the dark days, I am lonely, I am anxious, everything and everyone is grey, nothing holds any interest to me and I can't concentrate on anything or anyone.  You might assume I don't listen to people, but I'm trying so hard and failing. The flipside of me is a dark chasm, I assume everyone hates me and I'm suspicious of everything.  I have no energy, I eat everything in sight and all I want to do is sleep for days.

That paragraph is perhaps an oversimplification of how my general life works but should you have a spare half hour, please go and watch season 1, episode 3 of Modern Love, Anne Hathaway's interpretation of being a bipolar woman is my life entire.  Of course, I am medicated for that but what I'm not medicated for is the autistic part of my brain and when you put everything together, even with medication I can be a difficult and complicated person to love.

In some ways now, I think if I could just switch off that lonely part of my brain, the Achilles heel, I would do furthermore extraordinary things on my own and I would not worry that I was missing out on the things that neurotypical people enjoy so much.  Like visits to the pub and parties and crowds.  I do like occasional nights in the pub, I love to throw a good party but they all have parameters where I become exhausted and it can take me a week to recover from excessive peopling.

Look, I won't say, it's hard to be me because really, it's hard to be a human, especially this last year, sometimes it's been an emotional battle just to want to go on, to continue to not just give up completely but I am still here.  

It's now Tuesday and I went to bed very early last night because I could not deal with the day or the weekend any longer, I just wanted to sleep and forget, when I am depressed, the bed is my cocoon, sleep is the thing I love most and this morning outside it is gloomy.  The rain is falling and splashing against the window.  The cherry blossom still blooms though, it hangs heavy and abundant in the trees outside my window on the ugly urban estate on which I live, it reminds me that beautiful things still happen even on the darkest of days and as someone once said, what if things aren't falling apart? What if things are just shifting into a better place?

Thanks for reading, today and every day...

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I am everything and I am nothing - A Post for World Mental Health Day 2018

Today is World Mental Health Day, a day when we raise awareness and understanding of mental health and I personally believe we've made more progress in the last 10 years than ever before.  The first news article I was featured in talking about bipolar caused me to lose business but now more than ever most people I know, clients, family, friends, pretty much all of them are aware of the personal battles I continue to fight, they also know it doesn't make me a worse person in business or in my personal life.  Because I have the ability to talk about my own issues in a public forum it also helps to create an understanding that I am who I say I am and if I'm not doing so well I will let people know, that's actually part of my own self care.

Bipolar, severe anxiety, agoraphobic thoughts, social anxiety, autistic traits, that's how you could describe me and I'd own every single thing because I'm also brilliant, slightly eccentric, a business woman, a mum, a friend, an entrepreneur, I own 2 companies and one beagle, I laugh, I cry, I love, I feel, I am everything and I am nothing all at the same time.

On days when I'm on top form, I am great at making money, I am fantastic at coming up with new ideas, I can speak in public passionately without any fear, heck I can even do a spot on the radio.

On the bad days, I worry about everything, I overthink everything, I'm scared of the world, I'm terrified of people and I'm paranoid that every single person out there hates me, I dread opening emails, I can't pick up the phone and I want to hide from the world forever without ever having to think about the simplest things like cooking or getting dressed or even getting out of bed.

I favour the good days over the bad although I have no choice which is going to hit me, sometimes it's situations I can't handle, sometimes it's work stress but sometimes it's none of that, sometimes I just feel so very very lost and completely lonely and the worst thing, those are the times when I have trouble reaching out and asking for help, the crazy upside down life of mental illness is that the more poorly you become, the more you feel trapped, that's when it's hardest.

I'm lucky, on the neurosis to psychosis scale I've never tripped into anything near psychosis since 2003 and I hope I never do again because that's when it's a quagmire, that's when you feel you are trapped at the bottom of a well with no way of escape.

I write about this stuff because there are others out there who can't, there are people who still don't feel they have the strength to talk about this stuff or they feel if they do it will affect their jobs or the lives they lead and in some cases we do have a way to go in the workplace understanding the effects of mental illness.

Today, I'm okay, I'm fighting a battle at the moment but it's not affecting my work at all and when I'm not at work I get to sleep lots, I don't go out very often but on the self care scale, I'm so much better than I could be.  I'm still funny and make people laugh, I can still have deep and meaningful conversations with friends and family and spending less time going out I have reacquainted myself with my love of cooking and baking, I try to turn each negative into a positive and one day I'll win again, I know I will and if you're in a similar place, if you understand what I'm saying and you feel it too, one day you will be fine too, with help and love and treatment and understanding.  Just don't sit there in silence, reach out to a friend, a mental health professional or there's always a listening ear here with me.

And when you can, continue to burn light the brilliant, bright burning star that you are.