Bi-polar with a stoma Blog

Tinned Sardines in Tomato Sauce

Blog_Bi-polar — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 18:48:37 +0000

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.

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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...

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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...

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Where Eagles Fly…

Blog_Bi-polar — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 16:56:50 +0000

Every day this world teaches me that life is too short. We never know how long we have left to roam this planet and we never know what hurdles may appear in front of us that might stop us from living a life that we can truly appreciate. A few months ago I made a vow to myself that if circumstances permitted me to do something I would love to do, then I would try my best to make that happen. I had an English teacher in secondary school who was a big fan of the Eagles and when he was telling the story of a concert he’d been to, I have always remembered him saying that the band were amazing musicians, but they didn’t get along and had to be flown separately in private jets whenever they had to do a show together. Now, I don’t know if that’s true because any snippets I’d seen of them playing on TV, they always looked as if they were getting along just fine. I viewed the Eagles as being a band too far out of my reach. I believed that I would never be able to warrant paying the cost of a ticket, never mind be in a position to pay for one. So when the 4th June came around and I had a ticket in my hand for The Long Goodbye tour, I was pretty much the definition of… …the Kat that got the cream. I don’t know if anyone reading this knows who the Eagles are or if they know any of their songs, but this isn’t just about music; for me this concert was about sharing something with Mum. It was about coming through a lifetime of misfortune mixed with those momentary flashes of joy you wish they sold behind the counter in Boots! When I was in hospital in 2011, all I had in my possession was a little personal radio that I could plug my earphones into. I found five radio channels and each station played a different genre of music. There was Pop, Rock, Older Rock, 80s/90s Pop and Classical. Each station had one or two songs that my tortured Bipolar brain clung to and I would sit for hours flicking through each station waiting for a specific song to come on. When “Take it to the Limit” came on by the Eagles it brought a whole new meaning to that song. I don’t know what the band intended the lyrics to mean but for me, it was about being in hospital. It was about finding a way through the darkness of being in a psychiatric ward and coming through the other side into a brighter world. Take it to the Limit At the concert I wanted to film the band singing that song because thirteen years later, I am in a brighter world. Even when I’ve had those dark days; these days, the brighter ones outshine the bad. I know people will say… “You don’t need to film it, you should just enjoy the moment.” Well yes, I see your point. But when you’re sat on a psychiatric ward for weeks on end with only five channels on a personal radio for entertainment and your lifeline is one song… let me tell you now, I wanted to have Take it to the Limit on my phone so I could remind myself as each day passes, that I am not the same person I was back then. I am not peering out of the window of my room, looking at the metal fence, too tall to climb, thinking… “Is this it? Is this my limit?” Because the truth is, there is no limit, not really. Even when people say… “The sky’s the limit…” That’s not necessarily true either, because who knows where the sky begins and where it ends? Who gets out their measuring tape? Over the last few months I’ve been given the opportunity to do more talks at work than I have done in the last four years, and I love being back in the driver’s seat. As each talk has got bigger in capacity I have reminded myself of what my initial intention was ten years ago. I told myself, that if I was going to speak in public and tell people a story, then I would only do it if I was going to do it well. Being just “okay” was not enough, being “okay” wouldn’t make people remember what I’ve been through and it certainly wouldn’t make people remember me!” So I went back to the beginning. I got in touch with my good friend Richard McCann and I booked myself on to his Storytelling Retreat in Leeds, 21st to 23rd June 2024. Oulton Hall, Leeds It was three days in luxurious surroundings, fine dining, good company and intensive training on how to stand, deliver, and tell your truth. Oulton Hall was out of this world, tall ceilings, chandeliers (you all know how much I love a good chandelier), I had a suite! With a bed twice the size of my own at home, a walk-in shower as well as a separate bath, big sink, wide mirror, massive TV, a desk to set up my laptop on. I had a coffee table to accompany my sofa and armchair, and to put the icing on the cake that already had far too many tiers… I had a fridge and free flowing tea and coffee! Winning! The suite! There was a spa with a pool that was at my disposal so I went swimming every single day. As I sat in my suite, in the centre of the biggest bed I have ever seen, I thought to myself… “This is the only time I will ever get to experience something like this.” I promised myself I would get the most out of the weekend. I would follow Richard’s guidance, I would write down everything I needed to remember, and I would...

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Tea Thief…

Blog_Bi-polar — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 15:54:28 +0000

When you spend ten years working in the centre of Manchester, it’s hard not to make friends. In my last job 90% of my lunchbreaks were spent in coffee shops near the office where I would meet my friends from all angles of my life and within 60 minutes, we would discuss life’s trials and tribulations and solve all the problems the world was facing at the same time. Covid saw to it that my working life in Manchester was put to a stop and life became much easier working in Bolton, but just because my job went to its eternal bed it didn’t mean the friendships I’d formed had to go to bed with it. I still see some of those people on a regular basis and every time we see each other we go back to doing the thing we’re always great at… …making our lives a better place to be by having each other in it. I know this sounds like a nostalgic and possibly “fluffy” little piece but hang fire on clicking the close button and give me a few more sentences. I like tea. I really like tea. I’ve spent most of my life drinking things like PG Tips or Tetley until someone bought me a box of Ahmad Tea PG Tips became redundant and my eyes were opened to a whole new world of wondering how a dried leaf can make life so much better when it’s put in a little bag with a string attached to it. My favourite mug Over the last 5 years I have become a tea snob and even though I do drink some of the supermarket brands, like a fine wine I can appreciate a good cup of tea. I don’t have an expensive lifestyle. I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t smoke, my clothes are either from Primark or a supermarket, so spending a little extra on a box of tea bags is probably the most self-indulgent I get. In my drawer at work I have my own supply of “posh tea”. At the moment I’m drinking “Chelsea Breakfast” from Whittard, even the name sounds posh, and for a box of 50 tea bags it costs £6.50. The Queen of all teas… (Bear with me, I swear this isn’t just about tea!) At work there are one or two people who like a good brew so occasionally I try and make their day better by donating a tea bag in the hope that the gesture makes them smile. I have since been named… “…the tea dealer…” Today I was meeting a friend for lunch, so I made a conscious effort to get an extra box of Chelsea Breakfast tea bags for one of my tea-dealing customers. The beauty of Whittard is they have an array of different beverages ranging from black tea, white tea, green tea, purple tea (okay so that’s a lie, just seeing if you’re still with me), instant tea, all kinds of hot chocolate flavours and coffee by the bucket load in about 5 different forms. If you’re lucky they have samples on display for you to try and they have a membership “thing” where you would assume you’d be inundated with offers and freebies, which is why two years ago I gave them my email address to receive freebies and special offers. Well, the special offer appears to be one single tea bag that I never drink because I would never choose to drink it. The disappointment is real my friends, it’s so real it’s painful. And today it was extra painful… (Now you can grab your popcorn guys because here is where the story really starts) I knew where the tea I wanted was in the shop, so I went straight to it, found it, picked it up and was about to pay for it when I noticed there was a customer at the counter having a seemingly very deep discussion with a sales assistant over coffee. I decided to have a little look at the things I can’t afford and even though I don’t particularly like tasting the samples on my own, I would usually do that when I’m with my mum, but since mum wasn’t with me I decided to put my brave pants on and do a bit of tasting by myself. The shop is tiny. It’s the tiniest tea selling shop I’ve ever seen in my life so why they would need three people working on the same day I have no idea; but today they did. With my box of Chelsea Breakfast tucked under my arm I tested out the first sample, instant tea. I walked about a bit and perused the coconut tea and the tea bags with flowers in them and sipped from my teeny tiny paper cup, it was warm and it was nice. When I looked at the counter the coffee conversation had turned into what looked like a wine tasting experiment, so I had another look round and decided to taste the hot chocolate. At this point I noticed there was a sales assistant standing rather close to me and I did think this was odd because I’m still very much of a “two metres apart” kind of girl, but it’s difficult to make that request these days. The coffee conversation was still going on so I picked up another teeny tiny paper cup and I filled it with sticky toffee hot chocolate even though I’ve had this at home and think it’s a tad sickly, but it was warm and I was cold. Then, I noticed sales assistant number three had made an appearance and she was standing right next to the hot chocolate flask glaring at me while guarding a door, to what I don’t know but she then signalled to the lady behind me as I turned around to look at the fancy cannisters and a figure appeared at my side and she said… “Can I help you at...

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The Devil & Del Amitri

Blog_Bi-polar — Sun, 03 Mar 2024 16:31:36 +0000

Everyone has a hero. Everyone has someone they look up to, someone they wish they could be like, someone they could just meet. Who are my heroes? When it comes to me, I’ve had a few… Back in 1990 I watched the film Mermaids for the first time and within ten minutes I wanted Winona Ryder to be my big sister. In 1995 Natalie Portman won an award for best performance by a young actress in the film Leon, I not only wanted to wear the clothes she was wearing as she stepped on stage to collect the award, but at the age of fourteen I wanted to be her best friend and be her at the same time. In 1993 I saw Cool Runnings at the cinema and came out wanting to be a bobsledder. I even went home and asked my mum to hard boil be an egg so I could have a lucky egg just like Sanka! The minute I clapped my starstruck eyes on old re-runs of the 1982 TV series Fame, my imagination had already enrolled itself in the 7th series that never happened. I wanted Meat Loaf to be my dad, I wanted to be Enid Blyton’s protégé, be best friends with Zach and Kelly from Saved by the Bell and have my first and second novel published by the time I left high school. I wanted to be a ballet dancer and convinced myself if I pranced around my bedroom floor on my tip toes enough, I could give Darcey Bussell a run for her money. My first celebrity crush was Sylvester Stallone when I saw him in Rocky III and I was devastated that it was filmed in 1982 which meant he was far too old for me and would be more suited to the role of favourite uncle, which would have made things even weirder! When I was picking out careers for myself my maths teacher pointed out that I wasn’t clever enough to be a psychiatrist. I then turned my attention to becoming a psychologist; but shortly after I changed my mind and settled on becoming a podiatrist because by this point I was fully emersed into the world of Indie music and I had a crush on just about every singer in every band that I was obsessed with. I told myself I could be a “foot doctor” to the stars. Whenever I watched Top of the Pops, Glastonbury, Leeds and Reading Festival, any kind of concert where my favourite bands would play, I always thought… “Their poor feet, they must really hurt doing all that standing and dancing.” I was absolutely sure that I could help them and get closer to them by becoming an employee. If I was their “on the road” foot doctor, I could surely make them fall in love with me. First it was Crispian Mills, obviously, and I didn’t care that he was ten years older and when anyone said… “What would a twenty-four-year-old want with a fourteen-year-old?” I didn’t care, I was convinced he would one day float into my GCSE maths class and say… “Put your calculator down darlin’, you’re coming with me.” When I discovered he was married I knew the Crispian Mills ship had sailed and my ears turned their attention to Ocean Colour Scene. I would religiously watch TFI Friday just so I could hear the first few beats of The River Boat Song. When one of my school bullies informed me that thirty-one-year-old Simon Fowler would most definitely not be interested in fifteen-year-old me, I said… “Give me one good reason why not!” He replied with… “He’s got a boyfriend, you minger.” Now mark my words, I was less bothered by the “minger” bit than I was about the boyfriend bit, because now I knew it wasn’t possible and now I had no-where to go. Then I saw a music video by The Montrose Avenue and told myself that if couldn’t cut Crispian Mills’s toenails or file the dead skin off Simon Fowler’s heels, then surely Scott James would let me check out his bunions, assuming he had any. When my friends were fawning over Peter Andre and Deiter Brummer and trying to work out how they could go and see Titanic for the sixth time, I was looking out for the next band who might need their feet fixing. It turns out I had a list… Puressence Mansun The Seahorses Dodgy Starsailor Ruth Train – this would have been tricky since they were American. Stereophonics James Gay Dad Head Swim I have often said that I live my life through music, because as a teenager music and my writing was all I had as an escape. I could create any world I wanted and it didn’t have to be accurate because it was fiction. I could invent good people and turn them bad, I could make my characters swear and it didn’t matter what they said or what they did because they weren’t real and that wasn’t their fault. I could make them out to be as rude and as nasty as my school bullies because within those pages I could flick off the switch of whatever was happening in my real world and get some peace. The archive… Every Sunday I would finish off my homework while I listened to the Top 40 and pray my favourite bands were still hanging in there. Whenever they released a new song or a new album I had already pre-ordered my copy at my favourite music shop in Bolton and on release day I would dart down to to X-Records to pick up my cassette (Does anybody remember cassettes?). As soon as I got home I would gently unfold the leaflet to see if the lyrics were written inside. Regardless of the case’s contents I would sit beside my cassette recorder with my ear as close as I could get it to the speaker and learn every...

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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...

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I can tell a story…

Blog_Bi-polar — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 17:09:54 +0000

When you have an illness, of any kind; it can be a lonely and isolating world. You’re trapped inside your body and your mind and there’s very little you can do to separate yourself from that. When you have an illness you’re reminded every time you look into the mirror that there’s something wrong with you. When you have a mental illness, every time you look into the mirror it’s an introduction to how you’re doing that day. It’s been ten years since I made the decision to try my hand at public speaking. In 2014 I couldn’t even read a menu out loud never mind stand up in front of a group of people and talk about my mental health journey. Most people I talk to say the thought of public speaking terrifies them, and once upon a time, I would have agreed with them. Over the years people have asked me… “…Why? Why would you do such a scary thing to yourself…by choice?!” My answer is simple… “Why not?” When I’m asked why I wanted to become a public speaker, I don’t struggle to find my words. I got tired of people saying “no” to the things I wanted to do. I got bored of medical professionals putting the mentally ill into a box and saying… “This person can’t do this because they’re mentally ill.” I got frustrated with the world for allowing people to perceive the “mentally ill” as a group of people who can’t function in a society that is far from functional in the first place! My life today is very simple. I have not travelled the whole of the world, I have not experienced a tornado of heartache and heartbreak and throughout my 20’s and 30’s I was never ambitious when it came to my working life. Some say I settled for a basic way of living and I probably did. But what I would say about that is… “At least I’m alive.” A friend once said I should aim higher and look for a proper career. They said… “If someone asks you where you see yourself in five years, what would you say?” I said… “Alive, hopefully.” I don’t measure success according to the five, ten, fifteen year plan others set for themselves. I try to be grateful for what I have and if I am happy with the things that come my way, then I count that as a success. When I started public speaking I didn’t really know where I wanted to take it or how far I could go with it. When people ask me what I talk about and my answer is “myself” I always answer with caution because all I can see in their eyes is them thinking… “What could you possibly have to say about yourself that anyone would want to listen to?” Well, as it turns out, I have quite a bit to say and people seem to want to listen to it. Before Covid I was doing multiple talks per month but after lockdown everything didn’t just slow, it came to a halt altogether. I went from one job where people knew I had a public speaking side show, to a job where no one knew anything about me and any mention of public speaking was most probably seen as either a lie, or not worth registering because there was no current proof. Well now there’s proof. This year I have gone from doing three talks in four years to three talks in one month; and it feels good to be back on that horse. Every year since 2019 Abertay University have asked me to speak to some of their students. During Covid I spoke over MSTeams, which if you’ve used it, you’ll know it’s a better version of Zoom but still problematic. Last year the doors of in-person speaking reopened and I had the chance to go up to Dundee again, stay in a hotel and have a little adventure. I had three rules! My rules were as follows… Do not get an ear infection. Do not get fibre induced acne on face. Do not have Colitis flare up. What happened? I hear you ask… All flippin three! Every single one of them! I managed to curb the ear infection and found an anti-biotic spray I’d kept since my last one, so that was that taken care of. I imagine you’re wondering what fibre induced acne might be. Well, I can’t digest anything with fibre in it, which is basically anything healthy. So what did I eat prior to going to Dundee? A lot of fibre, which then causes my face to break out into a collection of volcanoes that take days to fully erupt and weeks to clear. I got three of them on my face! To complete the triangle, of course my colon decided it wanted to shed the insides of itself and have me writhing in agony the night before I left for Dundee, and skating on the edge of a cliff with no toilet insight. And trust me, when you have no working muscles to hold in the delights of a stagnant organ that never worked in the first place, needing to go to the toilet is the last thing you want to be thinking about. Picture this… I’d paid for a first class train ticket and as I was feeling like a tired and deflated whoopie cushion, I was beyond relieved to discover I could sit next to a toilet. That is until they cancelled the train and we were stranded at Preston to then be ushered in to a strange taxi that would take a couple of us to Glasgow. I was fine. I was absolutely fine… until I needed the toilet. I have never used Tena Lady, but at that moment I would have snatched an old lady’s hand off just for the protection. I remember finally arriving in Dundee and waiting for my hotel room...

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Warm hearts…

Blog_Bi-polar — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 14:48:58 +0000

The pretty scarf out of its cellophane Today is Saturday 20th January 2024. As I write this blog I am in my pyjamas, in my living room with my cat by myside warming herself on a heated blanket. I know, party like a rockstarright? Well, today I partied like a different kind of rock star. Ten years ago, someone once said… “Never say no to any kind of publicspeaking opportunity.” I listened to that advice, and I have never said no to any kind of speakingopportunity. Two years ago, the hospital chaplain walked onto the ward where Iwork. It was a week after I lost my friend to suicide and we could nothave been more different. Ade is a Reverand and Minister of anEvangelical church in Manchester and I have always struggled with the conceptof religion. I am not a believer in God but I have always been a firmbeliever in fate. I believe everything happens for a reason; it’s notalways good and it’s not always fair but I also believe that people meet for areason. Ade took me under his wing. He looked after my wellbeing at a timewhen I wasn’t sure what my wellbeing was supposed to look like. Fastforward two and a half years and last week Ade asked me to tell my story to ahundred people at the annual conference at his church. He said… “It’s short notice, you can thinkabout it, you can say no…” I said… “I’ll do it. Thank you. Ifyou think I can do this, I will do it.” He said… “It’s an African church and 90% of thepeople will be black and we wear white.” Well, the only thing I have that’s white is my wedding dress and a scarf afriend bought me that never made it out of the cellophane because it’s toopretty. I figured my wedding dress might not be appropriate so my prettyscarf made it out of the cellophane to cover my hair. Now I am not experienced when it comes to church attendance. I canprobably count on one hand how many times I’ve been to a Greek church and anyother kind of church was probably for someone else’s wedding. You canprobably imagine I was a little fish flapping away outside of the bowlcontaining the water I needed to be in. I had no idea what to expect. Two of my favourite people came with mein the form of mum and Matt and as I write this I have to tell you, I havenever been more grateful to them for being there than I was today, not simplybecause I had people there, but trust me, when I walked through the doors ofthat church I was instantly emotional. I kid you not, the welcome wereceived gave a whole new meaning to the word… “…wholesome.” We were embraced, we were greeted with smiles and warmth and it wasbeautiful! No one looked at us strangely. We were the only three people whoweren’t African, and you know what? It didn’t matter. We took our shoes off, the men were seated to the right and women to theleft. I felt so sorry for Matt, this was probably not his mostcomfortable moment and he was now separated from everything that wasfamiliar. But you know what? Matt’s a trooper. He gets a lotof stick in life and I am guilty for some of that, but I have never been asproud and grateful to my husband as I was today. There was music, there was dancing; there was joy. I wish I could sayI lost myself in the atmosphere but my ridiculous inability to “let go” stoppedme from doing that and if I could go back, I would dance around that floor andcelebrate life with the rest of them. I am always cold. I wear between two and three pairs of socks allyears round. I have the heater on underneath my desk all day at work andwhoever turns it off, they turn it off at their own risk. A coldKat is not a happy Kat. I have three hot water bottles in bed with me andI have never been to a church and not been cold… Well, today I was warm. I’m not sure if it was warm because the roomwas small, or that we were all sat very close together? Or maybe it wasthe people that made the room warm? I sometimes say certain things warm my heart, like someone making a kindgesture for another person, or kind words, so maybe that’s what it was, maybeit was the hearts of the people and their kindness and compassion that made theroom warm. People I have never met before who had no idea who I was, came to us andasked us if we were having a good time. They encouraged us to dance, gaveus water and food and I sat in my seat, trying really hard not to cry becausethe whole thing just felt out of this world. As I watched each speaker I was in total awe of their energy and I couldn’thelp but wonder… “How on earth am I gonna follow that?!” I’ve never kept a count of how many talks I’ve done. I’ve always beengrateful for any opportunity to tell my story but sometimes I’ve left the roomfeeling like it was a really bad job interview. I always put a lot ofwork in to my PowerPoints and I have always denied being a perfectionist andclaimed… “…I just like things being done right.” But I admit it here, right now I admit that I am the biggest perfectionistgoing. I felt really strongly about getting today’s talk right. I wanted toget it right for Ade and I wanted to get it right for the people who werewatching. With their warm embrace around my heart I wanted to give themsomething that they might think about, because being in that room, just sittingamongst the ladies, is something I will always remember. When it came to my moment, as I walked up to the front of the stage...

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Addicted to Blake Shelton…

Blog_Bi-polar — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 21:18:13 +0000

Exactly three years ago in 2020 I was obsessed with Panic! At the Disco. I was convinced Brendon Urie was communicating with me through the lyrics in his songs. Every single song had a personal meaning meant for me and together we would conquer the fate of the universe. Only trouble was, it wasn’t real … I was having a Bipolar episode. See that’s the trouble with Bipolar, it’s a tricky little customer. It disguises itself as something enjoyable, something innocent and ten out of ten times the onset of mine is a fascination with music. It starts off as a song, and in 2020 it was… “High Hopes” …I looked on iTunes and over the course of two months I downloaded every song, every album, every collaboration Brendon Urie had ever done on to my iPod and listened to Panic! at the Disco and Panic! at the Disco only. I’m serious, every bus journey, train journey, lunch break; even the working day was consumed by Brendon Urie’s voice and his disjointed lyrics that I made sense of in my head to suit my purpose…my mission. I know it sounds crazy. I know it’s impossible to comprehend and I’m not sure I can even explain it; but this isn’t the first time and it certainly wasn’t the last. I have always been addicted to music. When I write stories I have music in my ears that helps me to set the scene and create the personalities and sometimes the appearances of my characters. When I was at school I would sit in my bedroom and listen to the Top 40 just waiting for a song by Ocean Colour Scene or Kula Shaker to place. I went to sleep listening to Meat Loaf through my headphones and in PE I would internally sing the words to… “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” …to help get me through the bleep test (remember those?). Music has always been there, it’s something constant, something dependable that never failed to pull me out of the holes I was sucked into. When I was bullied I’d close my eyes and picture Crispian Mills knocking on the door of my house and saying to parents… “I’ve come for your daughter and I’m going to take her away and make life wonderful.” When I listened to Simon Fowler sing… “The Riverboat Song” …I wasn’t the spotty swot people picked last for their hockey team. I was clever and popular with perfect skin. The music I listened to made me feel everything I wanted to be and as a result played into the hands of Bernard the Bipolar brain. When I was fifteen my GCSE English teacher gave the class a piece of homework. He said… “I want you all to go home tonight and pick a song, look at the lyrics and tomorrow I want you tell the rest of the class what they mean.” …Well I had a whole cheerleading squad in my head shaking their pom poms because this! This was my idea of homework. I didn’t care about Shakespeare, MacBeth was grim and as for The Lord of the Flies, well, William Golding badly needed to up his game if he was going to compete with my entire cassette tape collection of Indie and Rock music! I must have sat with my Walkman for hours, listening to every Meat Loaf song word for word, writing down the lyrics, reading them, thinking about them and pondering what they meant. In the end I couldn’t choose just one song, so the next day I went to my English lesson which of course was the last lesson of the day; the only lesson I’d been looking forward to all day! I sat in my seat next to my friend with three A4 pages completely covered in Meat Loaf Lyrics. I was ready! But the rest of the class were not so ready. It turned out there was only a handful of us who had done our homework. Not only that but I happened to be the only kid in the class who had more than just one lyric going spare. “Katerini, how many songs have you got?” “Give us a song Kat, you’ve got loads there.” “Kat, can I have one of your songs?” Out of the kindness of my heart and probably revelling in my sudden albeit temporary popularity, I ended up dishing out five or six of my songs thinking… “It doesn’t matter, I’ll definitely get asked for a one.” …purposely I saved the best one for myself because I’d had every single word under the microscope the night before and by now I was… A musical genius. ….so there I sat, all smug and excited; pleased with myself that not only had I done my homework to the best of my ability, but as my teacher asked everyone in the class I’d donated a song to, to then dissect their chosen lyric, I very quickly realised that I had done everyone else’s homework to the best of my ability too. I have never forgotten my disappointment. The disappointment that no one in the class said… “Actually Sir, this is Katerini’s work. I didn’t do my homework so I stole part of hers.” I was disappointed that I didn’t get picked, again, only this time instead of being on a hockey field, it was in a field where I saw myself as an expert. Back in 1998 I could not have foreseen my Bipolar diagnosis and I would never have imagined that the one thing I’d always loved and believed kept me safe, would sometimes play out to my detriment. Sometimes the noise of my own thoughts is too loud to bear so I put my headphones on and drown out the chaos with the voices of… Four Norwegian singers (Kurt Nilsen, Espen Lind, Alejandro Fuentes, Askil Holm) who I later imagined were talking to me through their live albums… “Hallelujah Vol 1” and “Hallelujah...

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