I am told, that in my younger years I liked eating tinned sardines in tomato sauce. 

Being an adult now, I view this as quite a sophisticated and sensible choice of snack, so years later I purchased a tin of sardines in tomato sauce and I spread them (if you can call it that) on toast. There was tomato sauce all over the show, because sardines are messy little fishies.

I remember thinking…

“This stinks and it’s gross.”  

I don’t ever remember liking it.

A couple of months ago I found myself battling another bipolar blip. I’m not quite sure where it came from, just that The Calling were the band of choice and lead singer Alex Band was trying to communicate an unknown message through his songs.

I have no idea what that message was because the ever disintegrating rational part of my brain was trying its best to hang on to sanity, while Bernard was doing his absolute best to entertain himself by creating countless playlists on my Apple Music account screaming out saying:

“Isn’t this fun?! Aren’t we having a good time with this?! Remember this song?! We used to love this song! Remember Kat? Remember?!”

As I sat there in my office at work, trying to put my best foot forward and keep a smile on my face as I did my day, I kept thinking…

“This isn’t fun. It’s not even a little bit fun.”

So many people ask me what bipolar is like, and all I could ever say was…

“It’s a series of highs and lows.”

Well, after eating the sardines in tomato sauce I can now say…

Bipolar is being told how good something is because you’ve not had it for a while. The only thing is, when you get the chance to experience it again, you come to realise that what you thought you liked; what you thought was good for you, is quite the opposite. 

You realise, you don’t like being high, it’s not fun being up all night, the whole music thing has become one giant burden on the shoulders of every person you know, as well as yourself; and it’s actually really boring.

Bipolar is like being trapped in a tin of sardines. You can’t move, everything stinks and it’s really messy! 

This time around I was on the ball (it doesn’t happen very often). I took the extra meds, stuck to my routine, spoke to my consultant and waited for the nightmare to pass.

Unfortunately, bipolar disorder isn’t going away, you can’t prevent it, you can’t stop it; you just have to deal with it when it happens. How you choose to deal with it, is your own choice. 

Every day I remind myself, and others; that music is still fun. I do like certain songs, and making playlists on Apple Music is perfectly okay. I just have to be aware, before it’s too late, that even when the world is big and my own world begins to shrink and it feels as though the walls are caving in. I can take solace in the fact that…

…I am not a tinned sardine, in tomato sauce.