Tag: Mental Health

The Support Crew

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16.04.2000

(Confronting content ahead)

One evening about eight years ago:

I pretend to share dinner with my husband on our deck. The air between us is loaded with the conversation we are about to have. I drag my eyes from my untouched food up in his direction and ask:

‘Why can’t you just let me go? Haven’t I suffered enough?’

He explodes:

‘How can you be so selfish? I’d be explaining to our children why you left us for the rest of my life.’

The tiny bit of energy I have left coalesces into a red-hot ball of anger

‘Don’t you dare call me selfish after everything I have been through. Ever! I wouldn’t be leaving you. I’d be doing you all a favour.’

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Making Sense Of It

 

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How do you learn to live with the difficult truths of your life? The ones you can’t just step over and leave behind?

Confirmation of my Bipolar 1 diagnosis was one of those truths for me. For several years after my first episodes of illness, we didn’t know whether we were dealing with Postnatal Psychosis or Bipolar Disorder. In my mind one was transient, the other a life sentence. Each time I’d press my psychiatrist for a definitive diagnosis he’d say:

‘We’ll have to wait three to five years to see if you have another episode.’

This answer frustrated me immensely. I wanted to put the whole experience of being mentally ill behind me.

Continue reading “Making Sense Of It”

Mind Your Language Katy Perry

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Have you ever heard or seen a word or phrase that made you feel intensely uncomfortable with who you are?

Until about eight years ago, I had never been on the receiving end of discriminatory language. And yet it managed to find a way into my white, straight, agnostic, charmed life. The first time it happened, I was walking through a shopping centre. The words assaulted me suddenly, shook the breath out of me: ‘PSYCHO BITCH’

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The Best Friends

Friendship
1991

I don’t have a best friend. I have several.

My first best friend and I shared the ages five to thirteen in a tiny village in southern Germany. We explored our world freely. The church bells and the colour of the sky were our only reminders of when to go home. We played in the woods. We watched frogspawn turn into tadpoles. We climbed trees. We built igloos and snowmen. We ate wild raspberries and blackberries straight off the hedge. We rode our bikes everywhere. Then, one rainy October afternoon, everything changed.

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Decisions

Decision making

How do you make your decisions? Gut feeling or logic?

I am rational over emotional. Give me scientific data or a good pro/con list over intuition any day. I have no problem with risk, but I prefer it to be calculated rather than a leap into nothing with my fingers crossed. But not all questions can be answered with logic. Ten years ago, I wrestled with one that had no right or wrong answer: To have or not to have a second baby. Continue reading “Decisions”

Are You ‘Shoulding’ All Over Your Life?

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As we enter the pointy end of the year my trusty, hard copy 2017 diary is filling up. There are end of year everythings to go to. There are kids’ concerts. There are art shows and celebrations of learning. There are special assemblies and swimming carnivals. There is keeping a spotless house…WHAT THE? Oops I seem to have slipped into someone else’s list because that one never makes it onto mine. But it’s an easy mistake to make – the straying into someone else’s list of ‘Shoulds’. There are extra work shifts, and continuing education seminars. There are more invitations for catch ups with friends, family, acquaintances, work colleagues. There is of course Christmas – no longer quietly creeping up, but everywhere we look, reminding us to worship. At the altar of consumerism. Impending Christmas shouts that we should put reindeer antlers on our cars and see people we might not otherwise choose to spend time with.

Continue reading “Are You ‘Shoulding’ All Over Your Life?”

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