STEPHEN FRY

Just to say you are not breaking any rule by bringing up old posts - but you may find the author has moved on.

KSx-been-here-forever

What you described oh original poster, is merely one of the many nasties that can happen with BP. I have mania and depression, and I did a degree and PGCE no problem. I've never had problems being on time and committing to work, although I tend to drift while doing it, my towering intellect takes care of doing it well.

Where I got screwed was in performing week in and week out as a teacher. I just couldn't stay calm enough to run the little bastards in lessons. I loved my subject, but in the end I hated the stress I was under.

I was doing an NQT year in a school, and when I started getting bad lesson reports from observers the school started giving me 'help' and 'advice.' Not being able to teach in my own way, using my own techniques from Private school teaching, cos the state kids were from a shit area and could barely read, meant that I was losing it fast. I couldn't get good lesson reviews consistently.

In the end I lost my job and wound up an unemployed loser.

Some days I feel so damned miserable, and so bloody tired, but my wife still gets up in the morning and asks why I've been online at 6am rather than spending my time making toast for our bloody kids and dressing them. The simple answer because I'm bloody tired out you stupid cow! To an extent I joke here, I don't know how much is exaggeration and how much is BP. But BP is just the label, everyone can react slightly different.

so bloody tired.

As for work........ can I just add I'd KILL to be able to do something I really enjoyed like Stephen recommends, but right now I'd be lucky to get the wage packet. No-one apart from my immediate family would care if I dropped off the face of the Earth, and that makes me sad. I want to give so much, but instead........

Katysara, I feel like this a lot of the time under the surface. But a lot of us front our way through life don't we?
I've always been seen as gregarious but in tougher times, not terrible, but tough I've just felt worse.

I feel like I want to give and it annoys me that no-one wants to unleash any talent I have. So frustrating.

Thanks, my wife is a great comfort to me.

The other thing I've noticed of late is how desperately I want to find out that other BP people are like me, understand me, and want to know me. I feel lonely, and yet I am closer to my wife than anyone on Earth. This 'loneliness' and desire to be BP, to 'belong' scares me.

Richard - you are in the right place if you want to meet people like you who are bipolar and get close to them. Eventually you might get to know people well enough to swap facebook or other contact details, though I urge you to be cautious and send things like phone numbers via PMs.

Weirdo - I hate calling you that, I think I will just call you W. So, W, I am so sorry to read about the death of your son. It brings in to mind the brilliant 6 feet under quote:

“You know what I find interesting? If you lose a spouse, you're called a widow, or a widower. If you're a child and you lose your parents, then you're an orphan. But what's the word to describe a parent who loses a child? I guess that's just too f**king awful to even have a name.”

~Rachel Griffiths as Brenda in Six Feet Under, created by Alan Ball.

I too am an atheist, you are not alone there by a long shot. I too have lost young ones way before their time, though not a child. I think you need to get on with your RN training to give yourself a bit of self respect, to boost your self-esteem. Training to be a psychiatrist takes about 10 years, 5-6 of which you would be an unpaid student. Why don't you become a psychiatric nurse?

KSx

W....I am so sorry for the lose of your son. I cannot even begin to imagine.
I find it strange thought that I also used to work as a nurses aid and chipped away at criminal justice classes. I still have not finished but plan to start chipping away again when my back heals and my husband finishes traveling so much.
I have ADHD, so it has been hard for me to ever decide on any one thing and actually finish.

XXXXX

The original poster has asked the same question all bipolar sufferers ask. Those of us that have it know that it’s one of those difficult to define disorders. Just lately I’ve been convincing myself that bipolar should not be regarded as a mental illness at all (thereby avoiding the stigma) but an emotional one. I say this not to lessen the effect and impact it has on people’s lives, and believe me I should know. This new thinking for me has stemmed from having to consult a psychiatrist again and in the process seeing what I have started to refer to as ‘genuinely’ mentally ill people.

I know it’s one of the symptoms of BPD to downgrade the illness, especially when you’ve been on meds for a while and are feeling better. I am minded of a town where I used to live, there was a man living in my street who spent his day doing one of two things, he either walked the streets at a furious speed from dawn ‘till dusk or he would sit in a shop doorway clutching his head in his hands, clearly deeply distressed. On one occasion I watched him sweeping the autumn leaves from the road using one leaf as a broom. The poor man was obviously seriously mentally unwell.

As a bipolar sufferer, my problems are not like his, they are a different set of problems, but they cause me no end of troubles just the same. Having said that, even with bipolar we can still ‘fit’ into normal society, we just don’t do as well as most other people who you might on first impression expect to do well. Seriously mentally ill people cannot do that.

My (our?) BPD allows me to do normal things in public. All my emotionally-out-of-kilter behaviour is now in my head and under physical control so nobody knows about it. Or at least they didn’t until recently when I ‘came out’, so to speak. Many people that knew me had no idea about my condition. I even managed to write a book about by experiences with it and that has turned out to be the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life, even better than quitting work and going to university aged 36! If you feel you are not achieving because of this illness, switch your computer on and get typing, you might find that was what you were always meant to do.

They tell me it will be sometime between August and October. Bit of a span, but there you go. Tell me something, when you did your radio show, how close was it to the release of the paperback?