Growing Pains Archives - Bi-polar with a stoma Blog

The Wrong Room…

Blog_Bi-polar — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 17:56:37 +0000

Last night I asked my mum a question. I asked… “Who was weirder? Teenage me, or adult me?” I asked her this because, last night I shared a room with Simon Fowler and Crispian Mills, (if anyone has read any of my previous blogs, you will know these two music icons were the be all and end all of my teenage years). Everyone who knows me, knows that music plays a huge part in my day-to-day life. I have the radio on in my bathroom every morning, I have a radio on at work. I have my iPod in my ears wherever I walk, take a bus, train or tram… And wherever I am in my house, I have my headphones permanently moulded to my head. I am not a musician; I am not a singer. The only musical instrument I have ever played was a violin and it was a terrible idea. When I was a kid, I lost myself in the stories of Meat Loaf’s songs to the point where I would shut my eyes and I’d dream about angels riding motorbikes. When I hit thirteen and I was introduced to hormones, I found my musical interests creeping into the realms of guitars and pianos with handsome and charismatic singers who wrote songs that I begged, in my dreams to be about me… I had a shoe box where I kept all of my cassettes, and as the months and years of being a teenager wore on, the shoe box became decidedly cramped with tapes by… Meat Loaf Del Amitri The Montrose Avenue Mansun Stereophonics The Supernaturals The Verve The Seahorses Puressence Embrace The Doves Buffalo Tom Dodgy Matchbox Twenty Cast …and everyone knows that my shoe box would not be complete without the two most important bands I had in my teenage life… Ocean Colour Scene and Kula Shaker. At the age of fourteen I lived every part of my teenage life through the lyrics I’d memorised from the lips of Simon Fowler and Crispian Mills. In the words I was searching for a combination of escapism and salvation. Every Friday I would watch TFI Friday religiously, even if it was just to hear the first few beats of The River Boat song when each guest came on. I once had a sleepover with five of my friends and surrounded by our sleeping bags, munching on snacks you only ever have at sleepovers; I made my friends watch VHS recordings of Kula Shaker at Glastonbury and when they complained I said… “My house, my rules.” Katerini, aged fourteen The first Ocean Colour Scene single I ever bought was “You Got it Bad”. It was in a bargain bin in ASDA and I bought it because I thought the four men on the cover didn’t deserve to be in a bin and by removing them from that bin, I was somehow being helpful and making a difference to their lives. The first Kula Shaker single I bought was Tattva because I liked the fact that the cute singer with the floppy blond hair was singing in two different languages, and I’d never seen that done before. Both bands mapped the way to me being different from everyone else I was surrounded by. Every night after school I would do my homework to the sound of Moseley Shoals and K. With my headphones connected to my Walkman I would let each song guide me through my Science homework. They would soften the blow of the Maths I didn’t understand and fuel my creativity whenever I wrote an essay for English. Not only that, but Crispian Mills became a character in a collection of stories I wrote at the age of fifteen. I created Davy Stevens who had floppy brown hair and was a singer in a band who wrote obscure but powerful, moving songs and found the love of his life in the audience of one of his sell out shows, and of course that love was based on me. In reality, in my tiny bedroom surrounded by posters of my favourite bands, I felt part of something bigger, something better than my real life. I could tune out the bullies, I could abandon being different, because in my own little world when I was with those people, I was accepted; I was normal. One “own clothes day” at school I wore a t-shirt with Crispian Mills’s face on it. The following year I wore a t-shirt with Simon Fowler’s face on it. I found stripy trousers just like the ones Crispian Mills wore. I found a white and black striped top that was a replica of the one I saw Simon Fowler wear on Top of the Pops. I was fourteen when I saw Ocean Colour Scene in concert for the first time. It was 1997 at the O2 Manchester Appollo. I was right at the front and I looked up at the band and I shouted as loud as I possibly could… “I love you Simon!” To me that was perfectly acceptable, because at fourteen I meant it. Twenty-nine years later I watched him sing the same songs that had once saved my tortured teenage soul and gave me the space in my head to be the kind of me that I felt I had to hide. Last night Kula Shaker were the supporting act and I watched Crispian Mills, dressed in his signature stripy trousers and a shiny black shirt, shake his floppy blond hair and play the same guitar he played in the 90’s. On the journey home mum said… “How do you know it’s the same one?” I said… “Because it was black and white and had a red cross with an Indian symbol on the front. He played it at Glastonbury in 1997 and I gave my character Davy Stevens the exact same one.” All of this was pre-Bipolar. There was no Bernard, there were no highs or lows and I didn’t...

The post The Wrong Room… appeared first on Bi-polar with a stoma Blog.

Tea…with Justin Currie

Blog_Bi-polar — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 16:50:13 +0000

In life, people tell you that you should never meet your heroes, because you will always be disappointed. If you’re in love with them, you can’t be with them because they’re famous and your humble lifestyle just won’t fit in with theirs. You can’t be friends with them because other than what they’re famous for, you probably won’t have anything else in common and if you’re a fan of someone, you can’t work with them, but you can work for them. Even then, there’s a clear divide between you that inevitably determines your difference. In my younger years I did three summers at the Edinburgh Fringe festival where I met Christian Slater in the Foyer of the venue I worked at. My friend and I had a drink with Adam Hills and his wife because we sold his tickets, and he liked our enthusiasm. I gave Johnny Vegas his VIP passes and made friends with some of the cast of Family Affairs (a Channel 5 soap opera no one remembers). I stalked Irvine Welsh to get my copy of Trainspotting signed in the hope that in a three second conversation he would teach me how to write a blockbuster just like his. I queued up for two hours to meet Bret Easton Ellis wishing as every minute passed that we would discover we had so much in common that he would invite me to his New York palace and show me the spots that inspired him to write American Psycho. In 2013 I grinned up at Josh Groban from my fourth-row seat and shrivelled up like a gibbering prune and just oozed… STARSTRUCK-NESS… I am rubbish when it comes to celebrities. I get shy, I forget how to talk, I can’t breathe, I don’t go red, I go white… and I forget that the person standing in front of me is just like me…a person. Back in March I wrote a blog about an obsession I was having with the band Del Amitri as a result of a Bipolar blip I tried to ignore. The Devil & Del Amitri – Bi-polar with a stoma Blog The truth is, that Bipolar blip turned into something much bigger. It lasted months, caused me to have a few weeks off work and reminded me that… You can never know it all. The obsession with Del Amitri never really went away and months later, with a much healthier mind, I am able to listen to the songs that filled my being with comfort and I can listen to the lyrics and say… “I know Justin Currie wasn’t talking directly to me…he was talking to everyone.” In 2014 I saw Del Amitri play live at the O2 Appollo in Manchester. But it’s surprising how faint a memory can be when you need it the most. I bought no merchandise; I don’t even have my paper ticket and I can’t remember what Justin Currie looked like because the one thing I do remember is that the smoke machine they had on stage was a little bit too smoky! In July Del Amitri extended their Scottish tour and moved further south, announcing a date in Manchester… Wednesday 11th December 2024… Did I get tickets? No, I was working… But mum did! I think she bought them semi begrudgingly with a warning text message that read… “This had better not make you ill.” But I had to be at that concert. I had to see Justin Currie on stage. I had to hear him sing “Kiss This Thing Goodbye”, I had to see if he still dances the same way as he did in the 1990s videos I watched on YouTube. I just wanted to be in the same room as the person who gave a tortured mind refuge in a world where, lets face it, there isn’t much available. And I’m not talking about the real world. I’m talking about my world, I’m talking about me, because it’s always about me… In June 2023 I had surgery to fix a prolapsed Wilomena, well in October 2024 Wilomena decided to prolapse for a second time only this time we have to live with it because the NHS only pays for “really bad” stuff and not just “bad” stuff. For the last two weeks she’s been in spasm and I just sucked it up and cracked on with my day to day life trying to ignore the excruciating pain and I got a surprise on Monday when my stoma nurse said… “One more day of ignoring this, we’d have had to admit you to get that treated.” My first thought was… “But I’m seeing Del Amitri on Wednesday!” For two weeks I’ve felt beyond sorry for myself while trying to work out how I will deal with a problematic Wilomena and carry on living the life that I am proud to have created for myself because while the NHS surgical team may have given up it’s fight to help me, I have not. I still have a life to live. Did I make the concert? Of course I did! I am nothing if not determined, my friends. Del Amitri were playing at The Albert Hall in the centre of Manchester. It’s a tiny venue mostly made for people who can stand and dance, but also has a balcony which has about ten rows of wooden benches, if you like, so you can sit with a clear view of the stage. Mum parked the car a few minutes walk away from the Albert Hall, so we wrapped up ready to queue with the other concert goers. Four years ago I used to work in the centre of Manchester. I actually worked about ten seconds walk from the Albert Hall and trust me! I know every coffee shop and bar that is in that vicinity. Albert Schloss, Dirty Martini, Starbucks… But as we walked down the road we turned a corner onto a street I’d never seen before. It had...

The post Tea…with Justin Currie appeared first on Bi-polar with a stoma Blog.

Not your average Valentines Day…

Blog_Bi-polar — Sun, 18 Feb 2024 16:22:46 +0000

Valentines Day…Love it or hate it that bad boy is going nowhere. Before I start waffling on about the beauty of Valentines Day, how it ignites and fuels the love struck but reminds the unlucky in love that life does indeed suck; that for one day and one day only, you are allowed to wallow in your own self pity and isolated despair, because remember…you are the only person on the planet that feels your level of broken hearted turmoil… Did I just do exactly what I said was not going to do? Well, whatever you feel about Valentines Day, it’s all relative and it’s all valid. Not convinced? Let me tell you a story. I spent thirty-one years surrounded by people who worshipped the very concept of Valentines Day. I didn’t. Year after year the concept of that day became increasingly difficult to navigate and if I managed to come out of the other side somewhat unscathed, it was an improvement on the previous year. From birth (I guess), I believed that it was the guy who was supposed to express his affection for the girl. I believed that if a boy sent me a Valentines card with a terrible… “Roses are red…” …poem inside, then it was the real thing. All the way through primary school the same kids were kissing the same kids regardless of the fact they probably couldn’t actually spell the word “Valentines”. The girls got roses, the boys got a Wispa chocolate bar and I got…well, nothing. Taking in to consideration my chronic constipation was in action from a very young age, I got my first spot on my chin when I was ten and back in the 80’s kids didn’t really mess around with concealer like they seem to these days, so there was no disguising the monstrous volcano that went from red to yellow to just plain gross! So I understood why a boy didn’t want to send me a card or write me a poem. In 1993 when I started high school, that’s when the fun really started. I got more constipation so I got more acne. I know it sounds strange and I only gained this knowledge just before I had surgery and got my stoma in 2017. When you poo you’re getting rid of all the toxins and bad bacteria that your body needs to get rid of. If you can’t poo, those toxins have to go somewhere, so for me; they came out in my face! This was no good for a teenage girl my friends, no good at all. In my high school years when my friends were experimenting with make-up and clothes and were allowed to go into town shopping on a Saturday afternoon; I was in my bedroom, ploughing through my homework with my cassette player next to me listening to Kula Shaker and Ocean Colour Scene. As soon as my homework was done I pulled out my notebook and took inspiration from those voices and the lyrics in the songs they were singing to make a world with words that only I had access to. A world where I could create the same characters in school that I spent every single day with and I could choose to take away their Valentines cards, their chocolates and their roses and just give them… …THORNS! As every year passed it became more and more imperative that you had to kiss a boy! You had to have a boy want to kiss you and every single year, neither of those things happened. I became the gopher. The friend people would send to another group of friends to break the news that one person fancied the other and they wanted to go out with them. To this day I still don’t know where they wanted to go out to, it’s a mystery. It was a known fact, that some of the people I went to school with were the lucky recipients of multiple Valentine’s Day paraphernalia but I was always empty handed. I was the girl who never wrote a card and was never the recipient of one but every year people would ask me… “How many Valentines cards did you get Katerini?” I started off by hanging my spotty head in shame and saying very quietly… “None.” I remember one year I had a triangle of acne spots on my forehead with one sitting extremely uncomfortably in the space between my eyebrows and a boy laughed and said… “I’m not surprised, Cyclops.” I don’t know exactly where that boy is now but I’m pretty certain he’s not a comedian. I lived my life through music. I believed that listening to one song first thing in the morning as I put my school uniform, on would dictate how I lived the hours of my day until I could take it off again. I must have been about fourteen when I discovered a band called Ruth. They did one album, Harrison, I was madly in love with the lead singer, of course, and when I heard their song “Valentines Day” where the latter of the lyrics were… Ruth “Stay out of my way, on Valentines Day. Stay out of my way, and you’ll be okay…” Well, it became my anthem. Every year I would play that song and throughout the day I would sing those words in my head, strongly believing that the more I sang them, the more I believed them to be true. I was bullied pretty much all year round, not just on this sacred day and I had to work out a version of self-protection that would make other people smile and keep the bullies at arm’s length. 14th February 1994… “How many Valentines cards did you get Katerini?” “Oh the ship’s not come in yet. There were too many to load on to it so it’s due tomorrow along with all of my flowers and chocolates.” Believe it or not that bought me...

The post Not your average Valentines Day… appeared first on Bi-polar with a stoma Blog.

“Bath Bombs & Breakables

Blog_Bi-polar — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 19:32:59 +0000

It’s right about now that I’m supposed to say… “…happy new year!” So there, I said it. And what better way to start off 2023 than with a potentially depressing blog? I know I’m supposed to list all the resolutions I’ve made and announce my declaration of how I’m going to change and therefore save the world this year, however I stopped making new year’s resolutions about ten years ago when I realised I wasn’t actually fulfilling them. Talk is cheap my friends. So, I am not starting the new year off as I wish to continue. This blog is just a… let’s say… a reflection, of something that happened last week. Get a beverage guys and lets see what I have to say for myself… Allow me to begin… It was Wednesday 21st December 2022 when I phoned mum and said… “Mum, I need to go into town after work and do some Christmas shopping. People are buying me presents and I haven’t got one to give them back.” At 2:30pm mum picked me up from work and we ventured into Bolton where there are zilcho shops but, desperate times call for desperate measures. Like 90% of this country’s population I went to Primark to get my friend a present I knew she would love and I was just standing in the queue that was as per usual fifty miles long, more windy than a successful snake on a 1990’s mobile phone game – ask your parents kids, they’ll know what I mean – and I was just messaging my friend in Belgium about the postcard he sent that now resides on my ever growing “Wall of Happiness” at work. The Wall of Happiness I was minding my own business with my phone in one hand, expertly tapping away, my other hand holding said present and to my left I saw the definition of a… “…chavtastic family…” …with what seemed like fifty dishevelled kids, one prospective powerless grandparent and a lone ranger parent with a mouth like a toilet equally as powerless, trying to regain some form of control over her disobedient herd by hurling relentless colourful language at them which only fuelled them into further mischievous antics. From the corner of my bystander eye, I saw one kid throwing the mother of all tantrums, another one running around like a frenzied T-rex on crack, a third persistently smacking the oblivious grand parent in the leg and a girl throwing a round pink ball at the display of Christmas trinkets no one needs but always buys because it’s under a quid and potentially useful, in some way. I turned back to my phone, I finished my message and I was just about to submit my four letter word on Wordfeud when I spotted a small figure in front of me which I thought nothing of until I saw a pink thing drawing closer, heading straight for my face, then… BANG! Something solid smacked me right in the mush, my top lip. All I said was… “Ow!” The pink thing landed in my arm and rested there like the victim of a horrible trauma and as I placed it on a shelf next to me and noticed it was a bath bomb I automatically thought… “That’s gonna leave a mark.” When I looked up again the bath bomb thrower looked at me and quickly ran away, vanishing into thin air and everyone else around me said absolutely nothing. No one asked if I was okay so maybe no one saw anything, maybe it’s not that big of a deal? But then my tongue did a bit of investigating of my top lip and straightaway it found a slit on the inside of my mouth followed by the undeniable taste of blood. I pressed a tissue to my lip and sure enough there was a red patch and I thought… “…seriously?” It was already beginning to swell and the first thing I wondered was… “…how the hell am I going to hide a burst lip now that we don’t wear masks at work anymore?” Not only that but how big was this fat lip going to be? I’m no oil painting anyway and a burst lip was not going to go in my favour! I had no one with me and the unsavoury family had disappeared. I asked the family behind me if they saw what happened, but they looked down to the floor and denied all knowledge. With my lip still bleeding I took my place at the counter still pressing the bloody tissue to my lip and I said to the girl behind the plastic Covid screen… “A kid just threw a bath bomb at my face.” And she said… “Aww.” Maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal? But as I turned away holding my paper Primark bag, my lip still bleeding, I felt the emotion creeping in. So I did what any grown up, independent 40 year old woman would do and I retrieved my phone from my coat pocket with my shaking hand and I called… “Mummy” Mum raced around the corner like a bat out of Hell – sorry, once a Meat Loaf fan, always a Meat Loaf fan. The first thing she did was examine my face stating that it didn’t look as bad as it probably felt and then she apologised for not being there to protect me and fight my corner. Straight away I thought, I’m 40. My mum should not be needing to protect me, but lip was still bleeding and at this point, in the presence of my superhero mum, I cried. I felt like a child again. Like a teenager who was hounded by horrible insensitive and nasty bullies who thrived on the misery they inflicted on their unfortunate victims… on me. I was humiliated! Humiliated by a five-year-old tearaway and I couldn’t do a single thing about it and I couldn’t help but wonder… “Why me? Again,...

The post “Bath Bombs & Breakables appeared first on Bi-polar with a stoma Blog.

“I haven’t had a hug for a week…”

Blog_Bi-polar — Sat, 13 Aug 2022 21:47:01 +0000

I had a little blog break. I’ve been busying myself with my fictional project and turning my cat’s life into the life of an Instagram and Facebook superstar. I also acquired Covid for the very first time which has left me isolating like a hermit but giving me the option of whether to wear a bra or not. I have immersed myself into countless hours of terrible television and hot sweats in the midst of this ridiculous heat wave… …since when did this country do summer??? God dammit! When the little red line came up on my covid test last week I wondered how I would spend my five days of isolation. The first two days I was more or less bed ridden anyway but when the cold sweats and the aches that made even my eyeballs ache disappeared; I did wonder how I would spend the rest of my time. So, I cleaned the house. Then I packed my suitcase for my holiday in October, and now, seven days into isolation – because three covid tests later, it’s still in there playing footsie with my lungs – I have watched nearly three seasons of 90210 on Amazon Prime, one too many benefits documentaries on YouTube, far too many crime drama’s on ITV and BBC and today I pimped a notebook with fairies from a sticker collection my friend gave me for my fortieth birthday back in June. Pimped my notebook Tonight I decided to eat my dinner in my back yard; the sun had more or less disappeared and even though there was no breeze I wasn’t about to break a sweat. So I sat on my garden furniture, put my feet up and popped my headphones on and listened to City and Colour while Winifred pottered about the yard around my feet chasing flies she couldn’t catch. I’ve spent this last week on my own for about 99% of the time – don’t get me wrong Matt is in the house but he’s negative so we’re trying to keep it that way. Believe it or not I haven’t done much thinking, until today. When I did the third test I phoned mum and I whinged and I whined and I complained and I kept saying… “I’m fed up.” “I’ve had enough.” “This is ridiculous.” “It’s like furlough all over again but without the redundancy.” “I haven’t had a hug for a week!!!” That was the biggest one for me. Not having a hug. Because I love a hug. A hug is comfort, it’s validation, it’s congratulation and it’s something that says… …everything will be just fine. Tonight, as I sat outside in my back yard, watching Winifred have a chat with the gnomes, I had an epiphany. The girl loves an audience I acknowledge I have more than the potential to be a drama queen and today I fulfilled that potential. This morning my complaints were all about me. I’ve been stuck in the house, I couldn’t to go work, I’ve had to cancel on friends, I couldn’t co-facilitate the Bipolar support group, I haven’t seen my mum properly in days! All of that is valid and true and I do believe I have a right to be fed up… …but only to a point. In the midst of my whinging and whining I forgot Covid-19’s rap sheet and I forgot about the last two years. I forgot that people have lost their jobs and their livelihoods. People lost their homes… …they lost their lives! So I reminded myself how horrible 2020 was for the entire world; but this time I put myself in someone else’s shoes and told myself that I was lucky I lived with someone. I was lucky that I got to spend those seven months on furlough with my elderly cat because at the time I didn’t know those would be the final months that we would have together… …if a cat could be a soulmate, I swear that Milly was mine. I reminded myself that despite redundancy I came out better off with a better job than I thought I would ever have and despite my reluctance to turn forty I have, when I know of others my age who haven’t made it. Most of all I looked at myself – well, I looked at my slippers – and I said… “What exactly has Covid done to me?” Apart from the isolation all I have to show from the actual illness itself is a croaky voice and a cough that only occurs when I talk – some might not necessarily think that’s a bad thing. Whenever I get that negative result I know I’m walking away from Covid with nothing sinister. I still have my taste and smell – Mum had it back in October and she still can’t smell my bag when I empty it in her toilet. Now that is bad! I may have a heavy chest right now but I’m not struggling to breathe. The cold I had lasted twenty-four hours, the skin on my fingers and eyeballs isn’t sensitive anymore and the aches are long gone. If Covid comes back to bite me then I’ll hold up my hands I’ll say it was worse than I thought but at this point I’m one of the lucky ones… I haven’t had a hug for a week; but I know I’ll get one soon…

The post “I haven’t had a hug for a week…” appeared first on Bi-polar with a stoma Blog.

“Shadows on Llandudno Beach…”

Blog_Bi-polar — Tue, 13 Jul 2021 19:41:33 +0000

2000 and 2021 I once wrote a poem, twenty-something years ago and I called it “Shadows on Llandudno Beach” it was my only poem because when I showed it to someone they said… “…it’s terrible.” Surprisingly I wasn’t completely devastated by their criticism and this was simply down to the fact that I disagreed. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder and whilst my poem may well have been “terrible” I worked hard with those words and like everything I write, it came from my soul so to me those words were beautiful and that’s all there is to it. When I was eighteen, I applied to go to university in Bangor. They had a creative writing degree that I desperately wanted to be part of but in a nutshell, it didn’t work out and I went to York St John instead. I remember mum driving me and my brother all the way to Bangor to see what the town was like and after that she said… “Let’s go to Llandudno on the way back.” I remember we parked the car and as soon as I opened the door the sea wind hit my face and all I could hear were the seagulls diving in all directions and the water washing over the rocks at the bottom of the beach. That day in 1999 I ate chips, I had an ice cream and I got pooped on by a seagull which really annoyed me because I was wearing a brown suede jacket and it was my favourite. But I also fell in love with Llandudno and I told myself that one day, when I was old and grey and a successful author I would open up my own B&B and I would live there surrounded by the wind and water and poopy seagulls and I would be happy. In the summer of 2000 after our A level results and we were just a few weeks away from the next chapter of our lives my friend and I decided to have a day out. She’d never been to Llandudno and I missed it so we took a little coach ride from Bolton to Llandudno and there was no mistaking it, we were the youngest people on there, we were surrounded by beige army but it didn’t matter because we knew where we wanted to be. That day was perfect. We walked along the pier, ate chips, drank tea in an old fashioned tea shop, we shared a bag of candy floss and we walked along the beach and picked out rocks. My friend was an artist so we dug out some of the larger rocks and made holes so our bums were more comfortable and she sketched the landscape while I wrote… “…Shadows on Llandudno Beach.” That poem was about my grandma. Whatever I wrote my grandma always read it and she always said she loved my words and one day I would be just like Danielle Steele – credit where it’s due, Ms Steele is a highly successful author so I was never going to deny that compliment. My grandma died in 1998 and everything I wrote after she died was for her, every short story had her presence in it, the smells, the taste the sounds were all related to the parts of her that I missed. My literary inspiration… In 2000 on Llandudno beach as I was looking out at the sea in front of me I knew I was about to take on a whole new life experience and I had to somehow put my pain on the shelf and move forward. That one poem was my goodbye to my pain and a hello to a better life. Back in 2000 camera phones and selfies were unheard of. I don’t even think I had a mobile phone at that point, all I had was a Nikon camera with a winding film barrel that had a maximum of thirty pictures and you needed a degree in engineering to load it successfully. We had no idea how to do a selfie so to document our trip we took turns in taking pictures of each other on the pier and on the beach and even then this was the height of excellency because some of our other friends didn’t even have a camera. When I flick through the remaining pictures I have of that trip there’s one of me standing awkwardly on the pier. I look at my eighteen-year-old self, thinner, better hair, better eyesight, no stoma and completely unaware of anything to do with any kind of mental illness. I remember thinking how grown up I was, I was on a day trip with my friend and I was about to move away from home to university and that was the best thing because I could escape from all the difficult bits in my life at home and move forward. I knew I was running away; I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t. I thought that taking myself out of an equation was the answer to all of my problems, kind of like closing your eyes and saying… “…if I can’t see you, you can’t see me.” I had no idea what was laid out ahead of me. I had no idea that the pain in my writing was going to get a hundred times more painful and I was completely unaware that if you start running from one thing, you have to run faster to get away from the next. That day in 2000 the only thing important to me was finding a music shop I had been to the year before and how could I eat my chips without getting pooped by a seagull again? I started my new job last year at the end of September and in that time I’ve only had a few days off here and there. I’ve always said I don’t like having time off if I’m...

The post “Shadows on Llandudno Beach…” appeared first on Bi-polar with a stoma Blog.

“Turmoil…”

Blog_Bi-polar — Sat, 26 Jun 2021 15:04:23 +0000

My face says it all… The other day someone had an iffy tummy – I can’t drop names because they would never forgive me for outing their unpredictable bowel movements but please note, it wasn’t me… When I checked to see if Anonymous person was feeling better I said… “…you’ve got such a funny tum. What’s going on in there?” They replied with… “Turmoil.” I have to admit, despite having a degree in English literature and linguistics my vocabulary is not as extensive as it probably should be because I am not the shiniest button in the sewing tin, so shamefully I had to look up the definition of “turmoil” which is: “A state of great commotion, confusion, or disturbance; tumult; agitation; disquiet: mental turmoil caused by difficult decisions.” Now before you all jump ship and close your browsers, this is not an English lesson. I could never subject you to that especially when I’ve spent all of my writing life breaking every grammar and punctuation rule in the book. I don’t care if my writing reads wrong because I don’t use my commas and my semicolons appropriately. I know it annoys the hell out of every single literary expert but you know what? I like starting a sentence with “but” and “and” because I’m not at school anymore and no one can stop me. And if my writing reads wrong it’s because I’m writing the way I would speak in a conversation not the way a GCSE English textbook tells me I should. At university I remember studying the poems of e.e. cummings. While I was never any good at interpreting his poetry I was fascinated by the fact that he refused to use capital letters in his work. I didn’t really care what he wrote about or how ground-breaking his words were, I just remember wishing that I had the balls to do something as revolutionary and exciting as he did and have the means to get away with it. Breaking the rules of the written word. I don’t know why but I kept thinking about the word turmoil and I tried to think of things in my life that relate to it. For example, if turmoil is having to make difficult decisions then last weekend when I had to choose between a Bakewell tart or half a raspberry cheesecake it was really difficult because, what if I ate one but still wanted the other? Would the waistband of my jeans still be slightly slack or would I have to take a trip to H&M for a larger size? Half a cheesecake and a Bakewell tart On Monday I looked out of the window when I was getting ready for work, the sky was a bit grey and even though my weather app said it was going to be a dry day, I wasn’t 100% convinced. The difficult decision was, do I wear boots in case it rains so my feet don’t get wet? Or do I risk it for a biscuit and wear the new Converse Matt bought me for my birthday? I also wanted to wear my denim jacket but I worried about it not being warm enough; I get cranky when I’m cold and that’s not fun for anyone. When I’m deciding what to cook for tea I sometimes look at my freezer and I see the three bags of stir-fry veg calling my name… “…eat meeeeee. Eat meeeee Kateriiiinnnniiiii!” Do I do what they’re telling me and bung a bunch of frozen veg in the pan? Or do I remind myself that Wilomena does not digest healthy ingredients and I should look in the mirror at the remnants of the fibre induced acne and remind myself of the repercussions of what fibre does to my face. Back in 2015 before I got married, I remember sitting in the examination room with the surgeon. She asked me if I had children and did I plan to because the operation could affect that possibility. I’d been in pain and misery for far too long a time for me to consider what she was saying so I chose Wilomena over children. Whilst this might be a tumultuous decision for most, I didn’t register it at the time. A few weeks ago I was in a bad mood. I went into Bolton for a mooch and popped into Hotel Chocolat. Usually I’d buy a bar of dairy milk but I was feeling a bit rich so I went into the most expensive chocolate shop in the town and spent, probably 10 – 15 minutes looking at chocolate that I probably wouldn’t like and probably wasn’t worth the amount on the price tag. But there was an offer on and it was £10 for 3x strips of 6 truffles and the hardest part was deciding which to buy because what if I bought one of them and it wasn’t very nice because then I’d have wished I’d bought a different one? The dictionary says turmoil is… …a state of great commotion… …but what’s the definition of commotion? Sometimes I make a playlist on my Ipod and I have to have a song on there a certain amount of times otherwise I get agitated if I don’t hear it. When I’m writing a novel I picture it running like a film and I pick out songs that would appear on the soundtrack so I listen to them as loud as they will go so that nothing but the action between my characters creeps into my head. When Matt plays stupid shooting games on his Xbox I have to leave the room because the awful noise of guns makes me panic and I don’t understand what the appeal is. I can’t stand at a concert because the thought of getting embroiled into a mass of drunken moshers is not my idea of fun anymore. I’m dreading the work’s night out on the 24th July because I’m terrified that I will...

The post “Turmoil…” appeared first on Bi-polar with a stoma Blog.

“364 Days Until…”

Blog_Bi-polar — Sat, 12 Jun 2021 17:32:23 +0000

Non-alcoholic birthday drink from about three years ago Birthdays… I flippin hate them. I stopped having birthdays when I turned twenty-nine because didn’t want to turn thirty. As soon as I hit twenty-nine I automatically spent the next 365 days panicking about turning thirty because in 2011 I looked at my life and I was disappointed. I was single – but so was Josh Groban so there was still hope. I lived at home with my mum -which truthfully I didn’t mind because I was fed, watered and cared for and that is not a crime. I also had a job that was more like hole in the head than it was rewarding (again, I’m really sorry to the guys I used to work with, I mean no offence), so life wasn’t exactly bleak but it was less than promising. 16th June 2013 In 2011 I scraped by when it came to self-love, it was more like self-loathe, self-pity and just get on with life because nothing was going to change anytime soon. I didn’t realise at that point that I was the one responsible for making those changes and there was no magic fairy who was going to swoop in and make me confident, successful and beautiful; it might have worked out for Cinderella but in the real world we’re not as fortunate, so for 365 days before I hit the thirty mark I looked in the mirror and thought… “…oh god, we’re one step closer to the end of the line.” Just thinking about the change in digits filled me with dread. By now if you’re a regular to my blog you’ll gather that life has been somewhat unkind and while most of it I probably couldn’t change there were aspects where I wish I’d owned some “brave girl pants” and given life the finger and just said… “Back off bad stuff…don’t rain on my parade!” In hindsight I wish I could have done that, but hindsight is one of those things that I believe only comes with age. I look back and I know that I had to turn thirty in order to learn this lesson. When I was a kid I had a party every year. I was lucky, I had all my friends over and my mum put a spread on, she made party bags and everyone went home feeling happy and fulfilled. Every year I looked forward to the cards, the cake and the presents – Don’t lie to yourself, everyone loves getting a present! But when I turned sixteen I sat my GCSE history exam. At eighteen it was my Communication Studies exam and at twenty-one I was depressed as hell, on the verge of a Bipolar diagnosis and pretending to ride the waves of normality when there was nothing normal inside my head. As time has gone by birthdays have just become less important. They’ve become something I want to avoid rather than address because every year I’d feel the beady eyes of those more successful than me and they would comment and say… “Have you not got a boyfriend yet?” “Are you still working at that place?” “Do you not think you should be moving out by now?” Comments are comments but those who make them who are reading this bear in mind, they burn because every time you question my social circumstances based solely on my age it makes me embarrassed to be me. I had friends who didn’t invite me to their hen do’s and wedding celebrations because, how can you introduce this person you know who has a mental illness, a poxy job and no one to love her, to your friends and family when this is not a pity party and this person is pitiful. I stopped celebrating my birthdays with friends because I didn’t think anyone would want to celebrate it with me; I concentrated so much on the negative side of my age that I never saw anything worth celebrating. The only thing with birthdays is, you can’t escape them. You can’t hide because somewhere, someone in the crevices of the life you wish you didn’t lead, knows the date you were born and… …BAM! You’re reminded who you are. I blame social media. It’s littered with positive birthday wishes and photographic evidence of pure joy that turn into poison arrows thrown directly at your aching heart. So when I hit the big 3-0 I took the day off work to avoid the attention because the idea of being in an office full of people who were confident, popular and birthday savvy made my head sweat and gave me heart palpitations. The only thing I wanted to do was sit in a darkened room, watch Smallville on DVD and pretend I was going to marry Michael Rosenbaum because he was also single and I’ve got a thing for bald men. I’ve never been mature, I think I’ve always had a young head on my shoulders and living at home I didn’t have the responsibilities that other thirty year olds had. Because of this I looked at all the photographs of joy on Facebook and I felt like I was being left behind. My friends had partners and children, they were buying houses and getting career promotions and while I feigned my support of their wholesome milestones, I wanted to crawl into the packet of millionaire shortbread I was eating and die a fattening death. But I had a friend who wouldn’t let it slide and in the end I was glad she didn’t. Janice is a big birthday celebrator and she took me out to lunch, we ate a ridiculous amount of food and I felt loved. I didn’t for one second feel inadequate about having a rubbish job or not having a boyfriend; I was just someone eating a tuna melt panini and a Mediterranean salad. My Mediterranean salad Every milestone birthday people say… “…life starts at… 30 40 50…”...

The post “364 Days Until…” appeared first on Bi-polar with a stoma Blog.

“One Scoop of Gelato and a tin of Mandarins…”

Blog_Bi-polar — Sat, 10 Apr 2021 20:04:02 +0000

Today’s blog is not about having a mental illness or about public speaking off the back of it. This blog is about the little bits and pieces that make me Kat, the things that I hope people like about me and I like to think when they laugh at those things, they are laughing with me, not at me; so if you are laughing at me, go away. This is not for you and I’m not being rude but I don’t want you here. Sorry, not sorry. When I was a kid I watched the film “Babe”, it was about a piglet who became a sheep dog(pig) and after seeing this all I wanted was a pet piglet. Unfortunately, with a dog and cat already being in the household it was a profound “no” when I asked my parents if I could have one. So instead of an actual pig, my family bought me endless pig related items, pencils, pencil cases, pig ornaments, notebooks, mugs and anything Disney that had Piglet plastered all over it. This went on for quite some time until the obsession faded and something else took its place. In 1993 the film “Cool Runnings” hit the big screen and I remember sitting in the cinema with my sweets from the corner shop because even in the 90’s you had to have a money tree growing in your back yard if you wanted to eat at the cinema. I don’t know what it was about that film but the whole thing just filled me with joy. Yes it was a film about a Jamaican Bobsled team and it was hard to relate to the specifics but, I saw something deeper. To me it was a film about being different and tackling discrimination. It was about hope and ambition and never giving up. More than anything though, it was about believing in luck, so when Sanka pulled out his lucky egg my first thought was… “I gotta get me a lucky egg!” I asked mum to make me a hardboiled egg and I painted it with felt tip pens and I took that egg everywhere I went because I truly believed that if kissing an egg could bring Sanka good luck, then it would do the same for me. But one day it accidentally fell out of my pocket and I couldn’t find it anywhere. Not only was I devastated that I’d lost my lucky egg but a few days later when I opened the door of my mum’s car, a hideous rotten egg smell invaded our noses and it was pretty clear where my lucky egg had disappeared to. But I kid you not, twenty-eight years later I still love eggs. In charity shops and gift shops I look at the marble eggs and I admire their beauty and sometimes I wonder if I gave them a little smooch would my luck change? Years ago my dad worked abroad and whenever he came back he brought me a gift. It was notebooks or a T-shirt, once he even brought a chocolate camel made from camel’s milk, that was an experience. The best thing he ever bought me was a porcelain egg, I think it was a birthday present. Now my dad never ever remembered any of our birthday’s, he remembered his own, obviously, he never forgot that; so when he gave me a really posh looking box and this beautiful egg was inside lying on a bed of silk I have to say I was surprised, but I was grateful and I was touched and I thought… “…maybe he does actually love me. Maybe he might even know me.” I never asked him and I will never know where that egg came from. Was it a present for one of his many women and they didn’t want it? Was it something just lying around the house and he thought… “…crap I’ve forgotten her birthday again. I’ll just give the egg.” I don’t know, but that egg is the only thing I have that my dad ever bought me and no matter where it came from I will always treasure it because I like to think it’s special. I tell myself that maybe he went shopping after work especially to buy me a birthday present, maybe he saw it and maybe he thought… “Katerini likes eggs. She might like this one.” I don’t care where it came from… Everyone who knows me knows that I like to name things. Whether the object has eyes or not I will give it a name and a personality. If I cook a chicken I sometimes I call it Pete or Gerald and I pat it like a pet before it goes into the oven, not that I put my pets in the oven, I don’t I swear! If I have plants in my house I usually name those too. I have tiny spider plant in my kitchen called Sindy, I have a succulent on my bookshelf that my friend made for me and I named it Jeff. When another friend bought me a Venus fly trap for my birthday, the first thing he said was… “What are you going to call this one?” I said… “Verity.” When my friend Jan retired from Band I picked a rock from a beach and decorated it with eyes, I gave it a feather boa and in her card I explained that the rock was a drag queen named Radovanka. I know it’s bizarre and what 30 something year old decorates a rock and gives it a personality? But no matter how childlike it might have appeared, I know Jan will have appreciated the gesture and it will remind her of me because this is just the kind of thing that I do. I love the art of drag. I love the idea that a person can transform themselves from one thing to another and you can be so far from your usual self...

The post “One Scoop of Gelato and a tin of Mandarins…” appeared first on Bi-polar with a stoma Blog.

There’s No Comparison…

Blog_Bi-polar — Sun, 28 Feb 2021 17:25:25 +0000

By writing this blog I am either going to be a massive hypocrite or it will be a monumental action in the movement of the game of life. We all play the game, we’re all pieces on a chessboard; we all move the marker on Ludo and we all fight for that one special piece when it comes to Monopoly – for me it was the dog, I don’t know about anyone else. Whatever your chosen piece for a boardgame the rules are the same… Win win win! Don’t try and lie, it’s true, no one enters a game to come last, no one wants to lose, we all want to come first and stare at the people behind us from the finish line and feel even just a miniscule of satisfaction so that we can tell ourselves… “…this time, we did not fail.“ No one ever says… “Well done for coming last.” They always say… “You tried your best.” But if we’re honest with ourselves, what we really hear is… “You tried your best…BUT IT WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH WAS IT???” I’m not being mean, it’s just my version of reality and if you disagree with me that’s absolutely fine. I am not naïve enough to think that what I’m saying is the truth because it might not be; it might just be my own opinion but to some extent, it is just as valid as yours. Today I didn’t intend on writing anything. I was going to have a weekend off from blog writing because all I’ve said this week is… “I’m running out of material.” But am I? Who knows? I’ll let the reader be the judge of that one. In just over a year I’m going to be forty – god it kills me every time I say that, simply because anyone who has known me for over ten years, will know that when I hit twenty-nine I freaked the hell out! I spent an entire twelve months panicking about turning thirty. I kid you not it was awful, I was awful! For me, becoming thirty was worse than any episode Bernard had to throw at me. It was worse than hospital, it was worse than losing all of my friends to an illness that I had no control over. It was worse than being left on the single’s table at a friend’s wedding and being told you didn’t make the cut for bridesmaid because your self harm scars would look ugly on the photos (yeah I’m not joking, that did actually happen). When I looked at my life I was ashamed, I was embarrassed. All of my friends were in a much better position that I was. Better jobs, boyfriends, girlfriends, they owned their own houses, they drove a nice car – they could actually drive! They had kids or were having kids or were in a position to have kids. I had none of that that. I was stuck in a job I wasn’t much good at, even though a monkey could do it for the same amount of peanuts – my old colleagues will agree with me, it wasn’t rocket science, again, I’m not being mean. Everyone else had everything you’re supposed to have by the time you reach that milestone of turning thirty. I stuck out like a poor unfortunate thumb… Mentally ill, single, rubbish job, can’t drive, lives with her mum. The epitome of failure in the eyes of the successful. When I was about twenty-seven I went to the theatre with a friend. I was working part time in a kid’s clothes shop. We went to see Billy Elliot. Going to the theatre always sparks of my creative side. Once I wanted to be on the stage, then to the side of the stage and then, to have anything to do with the stage would have been lovely. But for me, at that time I was a simple shop assistant; my friend on the other hand had a super high-profile occupation, she wasn’t a surgeon, but she changed lives. We were driving back from the theatre and we were talking about how good the show was and I made the mistake of saying how I wished I could be part of something that incredible. I remember her response as clear as day… “You’ve got no excuse to just be working part time. You haven’t been ‘ill’ for a while now and you’ve got the time on your hands to be doing something more worthwhile, you say you’re a writer so you should be doing something with your writing.” I remember instantly thinking – after “ouch”… “Well that’s your birthday present gone from twenty to a tenner!” I know some people reading this will agree with her, she was my friend telling me how it is and there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s friendship! Well, a word in your ear… Do you think the unfortunate haven’t heard that before? Do you think we haven’t said that kind of thing to ourselves? Trust me, when you feel like a failure compared to everyone else, that kind of thing is part of everyday living, it’s like brushing your teeth, it’s like flossing, pouring the milk on your cereal, tying your shoelaces on your way to your mediocre job…it’s a way of life! Now let’s get real, the world has been throwing milestones at us long before we turn thirty. From birth your baby is supposed to crawl by a certain time, walk by a particular age and be speaking full sentences before you’ve even thought about introducing them to the potty and if your kid doesn’t do these things, your kid isn’t half as good as the kid four doors down with the parents who have a jacuzzi in their back garden. Don’t lie mums, I know you’ve all read those “how to” books. The truth is, there is always someone telling us that by a certain point in your life you should...

The post There’s No Comparison… appeared first on Bi-polar with a stoma Blog.