Over the past year, my friends, family (and my psychotherapist) have often asked me whether I would consider writing a blog. My initial and usual response is that I have lots of things to say, but end up saying a lot of nothing. Who would want to read a regular catalogue of musings and rants from someone who, for the most part, simply CANNOT STOP TALKING? Who would have the patience to follow me down the rabbit hole?

The major stumbling block has been deciding the tenor of the blog: did I want to talk through the things that baffle me the most; to explore the struggles I have had living with a mental illness and accepting that I’m bipolar; is it a vehicle to have a bit of a natter? Who is this blog about? Who is for?

This blog is for me.

This blog is to ‘own’ (I hate this term) the aspects of myself that I both love and loathe. I often break myself up into discrete strata; sometimes they are like tree rings; most often they are permeable layers that pitch and warp under pressure. Sometimes I feel like a fractal. Sometimes I feel like film of molten metal. Whether I am any or all of these things, from moment to moment, is incredibly important to me because they affect how I understand the world. I am not particularly complex, although sometimes I think I am. I am not special, although sometimes I am convinced I am. I am not perfect, although sometimes I have to fight the conviction that I am plugged into some encompassing truth only revealed to me. I am a perfect lie.

This blog is for me to unpick fact from fiction and to admit when I am having trouble discerning the difference between the two.

Fact: I am Emma.

Fact: I am 6ft tall.

Fact: I have two wonderful (and long-suffering) loving parents.

Fact: I have been lucky in so many ways.

Fact: I have achieved things, things that have surprised me.

Fact: I have a small, but extraordinary, group of friends.

Fact: I have a job that I love.

Fact: In 2005, I was diagnosed has having bipolar affective disorder.

Fact: I take upwards of 8 tablets a day to control my symptoms.

Fact: I have been hospitalized on account of my illness.

Fact: I am ashamed of my illness.

Fact: I am not ashamed of my illness.

 ***

Fiction: I am in Hell.

Fiction: I am a genius.

Fiction: I am stupid.

Fiction: I am beyond repair.

Fiction: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Fiction: If it ain’t broke, make it awesome.

Fiction: I’m burnt out and useless.

Fiction: No one appreciates how amazing I am.

***

On the face of it, numerically, I have more things that I call ‘facts’ than those that I believe to be ‘fiction’. The problem is that the facts and the fiction are so closely linked. It isn’t simple for anyone to have perfect clarity about what is or isn’t true, but the main feature, or symptom, of my bipolar is that each fact or fiction oscillates and is more or less ‘true’ dependent on my emotional state. When I’m symptomatic, I cannot disentangle these threads. And this is often very distressing.

For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with my emotional reactions to things, or reactions to nothing at all. I had sudden and inexplicably extreme reactions to things and these often turned into phobias or immovable objects in my mind. Sometimes I’d have thoughts cascading in all directions and had a ravenous collector of knowledge that I believed had some grander significance. Learn all about sharks. Learn all about the French Revolution. Read every book, article and news item about UFOs. Learn everything about the Kennedy Assassination. Watch every wildlife documentary on the television (even the most banal ones). Draw everything. Paint everything. Panic. Rage. Cry. Stay up all night. Produce pieces of art that took others days to complete, in less than four hours. I became increasingly paranoid that there are conspiracies around every corner. I felt raw. I felt pursued. I felt possessed. I was spilling out all over the place. I felt alone.

One day, after having successive bouts of tonsillitis and fairly vague flu-like episodes, my GP broached the subject of depression. “Do you think you might be depressed?” I was disgusted with the idea…