Gum on My Shoe

Last night I met with someone in full mania and I felt something strange. As much as I could see how dangerous it was for them I realized I miss my mania. It made me feel powerful and free and brilliant, rather than sick and boring. I’ve made it through 55 years of illness and suffering with only occasional bouts of wholeness, ever skating the seductive edge of suicide. Few people are helpful when you are sick and many push you closer to that edge, either from lack of understanding or by disappearing altogether. It is, after all, an illness, a dangerous one, as surely as any of the physical conditions that can take your life. It is hard to know, sometimes, where you end and where illness starts. Therein lies the conundrum. Another anguishing dilemma is knowing you have to let go of ever being well again in the way you once knew. This thing is for life. It is a sentence for a crime never committed. And I know saying all this out loud will once again cost me friends. I thank ev...

I completed the final edits of our book Gum on My Shoe Saturday. I expected to feel excited and successful. Instead I felt naked, vulnerable and afraid. Afraid of how people will judge me. It was very uncomfortable. On Sunday I headed to the City Theater to see Next to Normal . The play opened up the insides of bipolar and sang it loud and clear. There was nothing I didn’t resonate with and it left no stone unturned. Eyes stayed moist. It left me whole again and sure of my course. The silence of mental illness is being broken and the brave me is a part of that. I Miss The Mountains [song] Next to Normal is a rock musical with book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey and music by Tom Kitt. It won a Tony Award for Best Score; a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Full soundtrack Its story concerns a mother who struggles with worsening bipolar disorder and the effect that her illness and the attempts to alleviate it have on her family. The musical also addresses such issues as grieving ...

I have enjoyed writing short stories since I was very young. When I read some of them now, I wonder where my ideas came from; a very young child writing about a scary place in the woods … I now know that my stories probably came from fear and stress, and at the age of thirteen I began writing a diary. I kept my diaries under lock and key, to save anyone EVER reading them, as they were secret, spilling my inner thoughts, feelings and behaviours at times. I could ‘talk’ to my diary about family life, where I’d been, what I’d done, what clothes I’d worn, and most of all if any adversities came my way – like my mum causing issues, boyfriends taking advantage, my brothers’ behaviours, rape, self-harm, eating disorder and so on – they were all written down, which kind of ‘saved’ me at the time. I found that by writing what was happening in my life, it was like talking to a friend – an unbiased friend who would never say a word against me. Like a good counsellor. Therefore, I felt less l...

I lay under a tree. Not the biggest tree. Not the most beautiful tree. Not the best tree. Not the most comfortable tree. Not even a symmetric tree. I didn’t even know what kind of tree it was. I paid attention to my inside world. I paid attention to my outside world. Until there was no difference. Fran