Mad as a box of frogs

One of my intentions with this blog, is to bring the subject of mental illness out of the dark. In 2005, I was diagnosed with Bi-polar Affective Disorder. Looking back through my life, it has always been there.

For me, the disorder presents mainly as depression and anxiety, with psychosis.  One of my main symptoms I refer to as 'colours and numbers'.

Black, white and the primary colours each have a numerical value for me. Black and white are 1; yellow is 2; red is 3; blue is 4. Whenever I see something, I mentally calculate its number. So I am looking at a green plant. Green = yellow and blue, and so equals 2+4=6. But parts of it are dark green, so I need to add black to the total and black has a numerical value of 1. Therefore, the dark green parts = 7. The pale green parts also have the value of 7, but that's because I added in white.  That's one of the straightforward calculations. Sometimes I need to multiply numbers together.

On a good day, such as today, I can glance at something and instantly know its numerical value. On a bad day, I am doing complex calculations to make each number be manipulated with plus, minus, divide, multiply until I get the perfect number 9... And those days
are exhausting.

To help me enjoy my days, I have little rituals. My meds make me very nauseous when I first wake up, but after a while I can have coffee. I usually use one of my Cath Kidston mugs. Fin has already brewed the coffee before leaving for work.  Married to a Texan, I am assured good coffee.

Our new posh coffee maker after the old one gracefully departed after 15 years. Our elderly bean grinder, now over 20 years old, Sainsbury's Fairtrade coffee beans.

In the afternoon, my treat is a cup of tea, an orange, and a mini pack of chocolate buttons. Only tea, NEVER coffee can go into my Keep Calm mug.

I am just starting to be able to concentrate enough to read a bit 

every day. All my life I have been an avid reader, but for about. 10 months, I could not manage to sustain concentration. Normally I love a good psychopath and plenty of gore in forensic type novels. At the

 moment I am going for something much gentler. I am on my 2nd novel about a yarn shop. The stories are easy on the brain, and anything involving yarn can't be bad!

Part of my illness is a form of agoraphobia, where I panic at the thought of being outside the house. Some days, I cannot open the curtains. Today I have the curtains open and the window flung wide to let in the fresh autumn air.  I take refuge in things domestic. This book is a current favourite:

So this is just one little snippet about bi-polar and how it affects my life.

Something else that has affected my day is Bodhi, our elderly dog waking up all confused and barking in the early hours. This was when I finally got to bed after 45 minutes of calming him down.

I feel the need for some fairly mindless crochet today, probably the giant granny square that I'm making for my sister.