Normally I’m useless of a morning. This is usually the middle of the night for me. I’m not sure if it’s the medication or the bipolar itself that renders me so pointless before lunchtime but it is as it is. I am just gentle on myself before midday, and heaven forbid I do have to be somewhere, I must allow plenty of time to get ready. Everything takes me a good bit longer in the morning.

I was a little low over the weekend, without an obvious cause. Apart, perhaps from my birthday coming round imminently. I realised that over the years, mainly my adult years to be honest, I tend to gear myself for disappointment on my birthday. As a rule my birthdays as a child were usually ok to good, but once married and certainly through widowhood, they were hit or miss. More miss. My late husband would lay into me, blaming me for the timing of my birthday (3 weeks after Christmas) and using it as an excuse to make things as uneventful as possible. I fear he would ask me what I’d like as a gift, just so he could tell me, “I can’t afford that!” He loved to pile on the guilt.

After spending the weekend with Martin, I returned home yesterday and began to tidy up. It’s the kind of pathological tidying that I immediately associate with being hypomanic. An urge to purge my space of the unnecessary. I’m not full blown hypomanic by any stretch of the imagination but in addition to tidying, my need for sleep is reduced, I haven’t been brilliant at remembering to eat or drink and my sex drive is up. I will have numerous tasks on the go, flitting from one to another. All the tell tale signs that my mood is elevated, but without the elation, the euphoria, or the reckless, out of control behaviours. It’s a very diluted version of hypomania. In my experience, I believe it’s a time when I would have been full-on high, but for the deadening down of the Lithium I take.

So hence I’ve been awake for the last 3 hours. I’m tired, yet my brain won’t switch off. Later, after my hair appointment and my blood test I’ll be absolutely shattered I imagine.

It just goes to show, that even on Lithium, an effective, tried and tested mood stabiliser, used over several decades; bipolar disorder demonstrates how it can be suppressed, but rarely vanquished. I should add that I’m really careful around medicating and bedtimes as these routines aid my stability, yet still the illness lurks, seeking a chink in my armour. It is the constant little reminders that cause me to say that I am bipolar, as opposed to I have bipolar. It is in me, it runs through my veins, it resides in my head, it’s embedded in my very DNA.

I have heard different stories of people with bipolar who claim they wouldn’t give it up if offered the choice. They claim it makes them the person they are and sparks their creativity. I do get that, although I’m not fully ascribed to the theory that madness equates to creative genius. And it would be impossible to know what I would have been like without bipolar, so it’s hard to judge. Would I have been so susceptible to trauma and abusive relationships without the illness? Difficult to tell. But swinging from the crippling, suicidal existence that’s bipolar depression, to the reckless, out of control chaos that is hypomania, I would give that up in a heart beat. Even the diluted, medicated versions. In fact that’s the reason I do comply so enthusiastically with my meds regime.

Because bipolar sucks. Despite my compliance I experience low level depression pretty much constantly. Sometimes it worsens. There’s the mini highs, like currently. The ongoing anxiety. The brain fog. The cognitive and sensory processing issues. And a side effect rather than a symptom; the lithium tremor that messes with my fine motor skills.

I do my upmost each day to live my life the best I can within my current constraints. And sadly bipolar disorder isn’t the only one. There is much I can not do right now. But I’m thankful for what I can do, for what I have, and especially for the people around me. The ones who truly get me and embrace my unique quirkiness in particular. I do what I can. And I try to be kind to myself when I can’t.

I received a notification recently to remind me it is 7 years since I launched the blog. I have written about so many things in that time, when in truth I only really started out planning to write about mental health. But like me, the blog has evolved and diversified as time has elapsed. As in my life bipolar will always feature, but isn’t necessarily at the fore. However revisiting it from time to time is helpful if only to evaluate, or to reflect on my progress. Which is actually staggering.

A life without bipolar? Well ok, maybe it would be a tad boring 😉