A Bipolar Journey

A Bipolar Journey In 2003, I suffered a psychotic breakdown that ended my hopes of a career in bookselling. Forced into contact with the local mental health services, I found myself in the ‘system’, labelled with a psychiatric diagnosis that I’d barely even heard of before. I thought my life was over, but I was wrong. Now, six years later, I’m three quarters of the way through a degree with The Open University, and I’ve recently had my first novel published. “The Fire in Your Eyes” is a novel of Bipolar Disorder, loosely based on my own experiences. I wrote "The Fire in Your Eyes" in an attempt to attack the ignorance that lies at the heart of negative attitudes towards mental health. I wrote this book to try to give the reader a better understanding of what it can be like to experience mental illness. People may be shocked to learn that 1 in 4 people will experience mental health difficulties in their lifetime. The media is often guilty of portraying mental illness in a negative light - implying that people with schizophrenia are dangerous, or that mental illness puts a stop to the chance of people leading normal lives. The Fire in Your Eyes: Blurb 'There is fire in your eyes and it frightens me.' At the age of twelve, Luci cannot possibly comprehend what her mother means by those words – and her mother’s suicide just hours later means she cannot ask. But the words will come to haunt Luci in the years to come as she battles with the highs and lows of undiagnosed manic-depression. The tragic death of her twin brother at the age of seventeen marks the beginning of a rollercoaster ride of intense emotion that pushes Luci to the very limits of her endurance. Her manic recklessness has far-reaching consequences, for both Luci and her extended family, and the accompanying episodes of depression leave Luci teetering on the thin line between life and death. When Luci meets Ben, she actually dares to hope that he might be the one person who can keep her on an almost even keel. But when tragedy steals Ben from her just weeks before their wedding day, Luci is left despairing of ever being happy as her tempestuous moods spiral once again out of control. Luci’s hopes of happiness are rekindled when she finds love in an unexpected quarter, but as the rollercoaster ride becomes ever more extreme, an episode of psychotic mania threatens everything Luci holds dear, culminating in her hospitalisation and diagnosis with bipolar affective disorder (manic depression).

By turns funny and tragic, The Fire in Your Eyes thrusts the reader deep into the tumult that is untreated manic-depression, a real rollercoaster of a ride. Opening Extract February 1993 What mother wouldn’t lay down her life for the sake of her children? Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, Elvina Rushden gazed dispassionately at her reflection. Her cheeks were sallow and stained with tears, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy. She turned her head sharply away before she could look into her own eyes, always afraid of what she might see there. Kneeling, she reached to the back of the cupboard and retrieved the small bottle of vodka she kept hidden for emergencies. If discovering that her husband had been having an affair with her best friend wasn’t an emergency, then nothing was. Returning to the bedroom, Elvina lay down on the bed, next to the massacred pillow she’d slashed wishing it were Jack instead, and lifted the bottle to her cracked lips. The first swallow burned down her throat like a familiar friend. The only friend she had left now. She shuddered, drinking deeply. She needed courage, and her own had abandoned her. Hearing her mother’s bedroom door close, Luci stood up and dragged her chair across the kitchen to the cupboard next to the oven. Small for her twelve years, she had to stand on tiptoes on the chair to reach the bottle of vodka hidden behind packets of tea and biscuits. Climbing down, she put the bottle at the bottom of her school bag with a triumphant grin. She was sitting innocently at the kitchen table with her English homework in front of her when her twin brother emerged from the pantry with two more bottles. Luke wasn’t smiling. ‘She’ll kill us, Luce,’ he said grimly, sitting down opposite his sister. ‘You know what she’s like when she needs a drink.’ ‘Wants, you mean, not needs,’ Luci retorted. ‘We’re doing this for her, Luke. If she hadn’t started drinking, Dad would never have had an affair with Ruth, and Mum wouldn’t have thrown him out last night.’ Luke propped his chin up on his hand. ‘D’you think this is it? That they’ve split for good?’ he asked. His violet-blue eyes were serious. Luci shrugged, tying her long chestnut curls back into a ponytail. ‘If it is,’ she said, ‘then I’m living with Dad. It’s nearly two o’clock and she hasn’t even been down to see if we’re all right. Left with her all the time, we’d probably starve to death.’ ‘Don’t be so melodramatic,’ Luke said, laughing. ‘There’s tons of food in the house.’

‘Which our mother is too drunk to prepare for us,’ Luci shot back, her eyes flashing. ‘I wish we had a normal mother – one who though more of us than she did a bottle of vodka!’ She bit her lip to stop it trembling, looking down quickly so Luke wouldn’t see the tears swimming in her eyes. She didn’t want to admit, not even to her twin, that she was scared that their family was falling apart right in front of them and neither of their parents cared enough to think about her and Luke. Luke got up and came around the table, hugging Luci from behind. He rested his chin on top of her head. Their father sometimes complained that they were too close, that their relationship wasn’t healthy. He hadn’t liked the way Elvina had let them share the same bed until they were seven, and had taken them to a speech therapist when their ‘twin language’ had interfered with their proper language development. Over the years, he’d tried all manner of ways of keeping them apart, sending them to Brownie and Cub Scout camps, and even enrolling Luke in football coaching programmes during holidays, but none of his schemes had managed to break the bond between them. Nothing could come between that. ‘It’ll be okay, Luce,’ Luke murmured. ‘Dad’ll come back for us, when he’s… I don’t know, sorted himself out or something.’ ‘But what if he doesn’t come back for us? What if he only wants one of us?’ Luci replied tremulously. ‘What if this is how he gets to separate us once and for all?’ ‘Over my dead body,’ Luke retorted. ‘I won’t let him. We come as a pair. If he can’t stand that, then… then we just have to take our chances with Mum.’ The twins both started as heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. Luke slipped back into his seat and pretended to be working on his French homework, whilst Luci dashed her tears away and picked up her pen. Under the table, Luke put his feet on top of Luci’s, pressing down with his toes. Neither dared to look at the other. There wasn’t enough courage to be found in one small bottle of vodka. Elvina could feel the desperate need clutching her heart as she made her way unsteadily down the stairs. The twins didn’t so much as look up at her when she walked into the kitchen. Elvina felt a pang of guilt for virtually abandoning them. She wasn’t a fit mother, she knew that. She knew that she embarrassed them, and they deserved better. That was why she needed more courage, or she could never find the strength to go through with what she planned. She went automatically to the cupboard where she had a bottle hidden – only the bottle wasn’t there. Elvina stiffened, turning around slowly. Luci and Luke looked the picture of innocence, but Elvina knew the bottle had been there yesterday, because she’d only replaced it then. And Jack had left the house with nothing more than the clothes he stood up in, which left only two possible culprits. ‘Where is it?’ Elvina snapped. ‘What have you done with it?’

Teaser Extract: April 2007 Perhaps it was a lack of sleep, or just frustration with the tediousness of her job, but by mid-morning, Luci was virtually climbing the walls. She couldn't bear the intensity of the restlessness that surged through her. Feeding a batch of photocopying into the auto document feeder, she burst into tears without even knowing why she was crying. As the day wore on, she started hearing a buzzing inside her head whenever any of the other staff came near her, and there seemed only one explanation. `I know what you're doing,' Luci snarled at Fiona, one of the senior secretaries, when she came into General Office to use the fax machine. `Using the fax machine?' Fiona said, sounding bewildered. `Not that,' Luci snapped. `You're all at it, trying to steal my thoughts from my head. You're trying to capitalise on my genius. But it won't work. I've copyrighted my thoughts. If you try to use them, you'll be arrested.' `What?' Fiona stared at Luci. `Don't come the innocent with me,' Luci retorted. `I know.' The rage rose up so suddenly, it left her gasping. She pounded her fists against the wall, throwing Fiona off when she tried to stop her. `You can't have my thoughts. I haven't finished with them. Not nearly. They're like shooting stars and I have to gather them in.' `Luci, stop it. You're hurting yourself,' Fiona protested. `Fuck off,' Luci spat, shoving her aside and storming out of the office. In her sanctuary in the deeds room, she paced furiously, the restless anger almost unbearable. She couldn't keep hold of her thoughts anymore; it was starting to feel a bit too intense. Like she couldn't control her own mind anymore. She tried deep breathing and progressive relaxation, but her brain was on fire, impossible to stop. Luci stayed in the deeds room all day, the door locked from the inside. She felt as though if she went back up into the office, she'd lose everything in her mind, and she couldn't risk that. She felt that she had so much to offer the world, if only she could decode her own thoughts. She didn't sleep at all again that night; she went out running at 3am because she just couldn't stay in the flat. She found herself alternating, at an alarming speed, between

laughter and tears. By the time it came to going to work, though, she'd settled at laughter and felt wonderfully energised and alive.

`Luci, you couldn't give the house-plants in the board room and meeting rooms some Baby Bio, could you?' Katrina, the only female partner in the firm, asked mid-morning. Luci was in the middle of folding a pile of papers, which had been left for her to shred, into origami animals. She nodded distractedly. `Yeah, sure. When I've finished my zoo.' There were at least two dozen house-plants spread throughout the office suite. Luci dutifully filled a jug with Baby Bio solution, but when she got into the board room, she started to giggle helplessly. Almost doubled over with laughter, she poured the Baby Bio out onto the floor and started flinging open the windows. One by one, Luci picked up the house-plants and tossed them out of the window. As they tumbled towards the pavement, two storeys below, she leaned out and waved to them. `Baby, bye-o,' she chuckled. It was like the homophone had lodged in her head; she couldn't stop laughing at the genius of it. She progressed through the office suite, so that down on the ground, it was raining cyclamen and geraniums, much to the surprise of people walking by. Luci was singing, `Baby, bye-o,' at the top of her voice, finding it all hilariously funny. `What the hell are you doing?' Luci turned round, with the last plant in her hands, to discover the she had an audience of bewildered secretaries. `Baby, bye-o,' she spluttered. `Wave to baby, and say bye-o. Get it? Baby bye-o. Baby Bio.' To demonstrate, Luci tossed the plant out of the open window of the meeting room. `Bloody hell,' Sally gasped. `She's totally off her head.' `I am not off my head,' Luci retorted. `It's not my fault you all had your sense of humours removed the same time as your brains.' `Are you on drugs?' Sally demanded.

Luci threw back her head and laughed. `I don't need drugs, I'm high on life, and low on gas… That's a song, have you heard it? Probably not, you only like slushy boy-bands, don't you?' `Keep her talking while I go and fetch Katrina, Sal,' Fiona said in a stage whisper. `I heard that, I'm not deaf,' Luci snapped. `I'm not talking to her. She's got the brain power of a retarded goldfish.' Turning her back on her audience, she climbed onto the window sill and sat with her legs dangling over the edge, as if she was preparing to jump. `Get down from there, Luci!' Katrina exclaimed, striding across the room to take hold of Luci's arm. `What on earth are you doing?' Luci laughed. `I'm not on earth,' she replied, beaming. `My brain is orbiting out in space.' `Come on out of the window,' Katrina pleaded. `It's not safe.' `It's all right, I can fly,' Luci reassured her, but when Katrina didn't let go of her arm, Luci sighed in resignation and climbed back into the room. `Go and get yourself a coffee, Luci and try and calm down,' Katrina said. `Perhaps Fiona or Sally could sit with you for a while?' `If I sit with them, they'll cause my brain to degenerate,' Luci said seriously. `I'm not sure I should have coffee anyway. If my mind goes any faster, it might take off.' Katrina sighed, glancing at her watch. `I have a client to see,' she said. `But as soon as I'm finished, I'll come and have a chat with you, all right? Don't worry about doing anything. I think you need to take some time out, don't you?' Luci shrugged. Katrina left, leaving Fiona and Sally watching Luci as if she was an unexploded bomb waiting to be disarmed. `I don't need babysitting,' Luci snapped. `You can go.' `What's wrong, Luci?' Fiona asked worriedly. `I'm fine, it's the rest of the world that has a problem,' Luci retorted, but in truth, she wished she could take control of her mind again. Random lyrics were spinning through her head, along with snatches of dialogue from her favourite films, with them the vague sense that she should be writing them down because they contained the key to something. Ideas flashed through her brain like rockets, every one more brilliant than

the last, but all of them incomprehensible in the chaos. Luci glowered at Fiona and Sally until they wisely retreated and left her alone. Luci felt possessed by a strange kind of anger tinged with fear; her brain felt like the scene of a motorway pile-up. She paced the office, clenching and unclenching her fists, them launched herself at the closed door, kicking and punching it frantically, but even that wasn't enough. Nothing was enough. Nothing could ever be enough. She jumped up onto the window ledge, ready to jump, but from on the street below, a car stereo was blaring out Elvis Presley's If I Can Dream, a sign if ever there was one. She slumped back into the office, crouching on the floor with her head clutched in her hands.