On #BipolarAwarenessDay I am offering some of my book in progress - based on my experiences with bipolar...

PART ONE

Touching down in L A Martha felt free. She was relishing the elation after months of suicidal depression. Swanning through the airport she reflected on how her decision to take a few months away from her work in England, to visit her old friend Gilly, had in no time changed the direction of her mood...

The friends had known each other since they were toddlers. They were like sisters minus the family angst and couldn’t remember a life the other was not a part of. Gilly was the personification of a caring friend. She had lovingly prepared the guesthouse in her West Hollywood yard...comfortable bedroom with shower and loo ...and had held off selling her car so Martha could use it. It was one of those long, low Volvos, old and slightly battered. Martha thought it was perfect and could hardly wait to get behind the wheel, undaunted by the thought of negotiating the LA roads. 

Me far left....

Soon she was signing up for energetic step classes and made friends with Nancy the teacher. She frequented the nail bars, sporting bright pink acrylic nail extensions. She maintained her dope habit and one evening got completely stoned alone in the guest house before heading out with Nancy and two LA boys who looked like variations on a theme of Donny Osmond. They spent the evening playing pool at the Hollywood Athletic club, and in her altered state Martha found the whole experience quite surreal.

PART TWO

(Set in the days just after 9/11)

Martha paced restlessly up and down the dirty white corridors. Dazed and confused. Medicated to the eyeballs.  To the office to ask for a cigarette from her supply. To the smoking room. She inhaled deeply, trying to calm the sense of panic. It didn’t work. Back to the office to ask for another. She was a prisoner. Sectioned. She didn’t know how she’d got there. She didn’t know how, or if she’d get out.

A fellow inmate, glazed expression, nicotine stained fingers, grey uneven teeth, sits rocking manically. A large American guy dressed in a shabby tweed suit – his pockets stuffed with bits of paper is demanding loudly to see this that or the other person in a way which is almost impressive but tragically ineffective.

Martha felt disgusting. She isn’t allowed in her ‘room’ – mattress on the floor, clothes locked away, more of a cell really – for much of the day. She wanders around in a scruffy green velour dressing gown, threads hanging loose, feeling like a non-person beside the smartly dressed female psychiatrist.

She hardly eats believing they are trying to poison her. There are several televisions that blare out constantly. Some are tuned to CBeebies, others are on 24 hour news. Martha is aware that men she recognises as Tony Blair and George Bush are making lots of speeches together. Something bad has happened. She’s not sure what but she fears it may have been her fault...