They are without a doubt one of the best organisations out there for helping to prevent suicide in people who are vulnerable. They guided me through nights when I couldn’t sleep and when all I could think of was the end. At the time I had hoped that I could turn to the Crisis Team in Leicestershire but when I phoned I was not registered and I found that they could not help me.

The Samaritans however had no rules and regulations about who was in their remit and they were there for me the whole time with unconditional support. I rang them on several occasions, usually within the small hours of the morning when I could not sleep and had no hope left.

I had brought myself to the edge. I had taken an overdose, not the kind that is a cry for help, but the kind that is a genuine attempt to meet one’s maker. My kidneys were failing me, they had reduced to a functioning rate of just a quarter of what they had been. I admit it, I was scared, terrified in fact but The Samaritans helped me through.

Although i did not say I was a Christian or had ever donated to their cause they offered me all the comfort they could. I had tried to kill myself but they still wanted to help to make sure I never did it again. They listened to my ills, they heard all of my sins and they did not judge.

I recommend them to anyone who is thinking of ending their life. They offer a friendly ear at the end of a phone that is impartial. When you fear that you cannot turn to family for fear of upsetting them with your dark thoughts they are there to light the way.

If you are feeling blue or in any way suicidal ring them now on 08457 90 90 90. They are open 24 hours a day and they will not judge you, no matter how dark your thoughts.

When Jon Pollard and I decided to do guest blogs for one another, him on his role as a carer for his mum, and my on my own experiences of being cared for, I had to think twice. In a way although I have accepted my illness there is an incredibly strong part of me, a fighting independent, that likes to think that I have no need for a carer.

This however upon reflection is not true. When I was first admitted to hospital in Manchester many years ago the psychiatrist on call asked me who my carer was and whether my illness was being managed at all. My partner answered crossly, ‘she doesn’t need a carer, I look after her.’ It was such a sweet thing to say because although he did care for me deeply he did do even then in such a way that he didn’t even think it amounted to his being a carer.

Now, living back home with my parents, the focus of my care has shifted to my mother. When I was given leave from the depths of despair in the hospital it was to my mother that I would go. Even when she could not care for me and watch over me in my most suicidal state she ensured that there were others who would pick up the slack. My sister, my father, my brother and friends of the family would all take it in turns to keep watch. They would talk to me and they would listen to my tales of woe and do their best to distract me and keep me from the darkness.

My mother, friends and family have all played a huge part in keeping me well and out of hospital but when I was in hospital it was often they who would keep me going as well. They would bring me tales of the outside world, freshly laundered clothes and sweets and treats to keep my spirits up.

I think the hardest part of being cared for is that sometimes you just want everyone to back off and leave you to curl up in a hole and die. It is not fair to ask this of anyone and yet you cannot but hope that they will allow you to.

When I am high I can be a pain to care for. I do not listen well to suggestion and am bad-tempered and often out of sorts. My mother has tried on occasion as has the boy to look after my debit card until I come down. But I become crafty and take to withdrawing cash so as to maintain my independence and have a little fun with my mood.

There is a care plan that I have that reminds me of all the people I need to offer thanks to once I have recovered and so often the list is endless. To be cared for and indeed to admit to being cared for feels like a loss of something deep inside, a proud sense of independence, but at the same time it is this care that has stopped me from succumbing to suicidal urges, taking flight to Paris or coming in harm’s way.

When I am really ill I do not take care of myself and things like cooking or drinking go out the window and all I have time for is to become lost in my thoughts. Having a carer who is unobtrusive when times are good but there as soon as times are bad is invaluable for me and there is not time or the words to thank them all for what they do. But I do thank them from the bottom of my bipolar heart I really and truly do.

Today’s shoes are a pair of Kurt Geiger wonders which I bought from Ebay for a pretty price. They are not the most practical shoes to walk in but they are so pretty and I love the perspex heel on them and the leather front are lovely and comfy on my tootsies.  

Things did not improve much as I grew older and every time I went to a new group or new lecture I felt the familiar dread and wished that I could hide at home instead.

What is strange is that when I am high I love new things. I will go to anything with anyone and will love every minute be it paintball, archery or even clay pigeon shooting. I embrace everything as an opportunity to meet new people and experience new things and have no fear at all.

This year I am determined that even if I am on a level, even if I am depressed, I will seek to embrace change and try new things. A few weeks ago Jon Pollard, a Harborough blogger sent out a tweet about a book club that would meet in a pub. Aha! I thought. This could be my chance to try something new again.

I cannot pretend that I didn’t resist at first. I had a busy day at work and the club was on my mind all day namely in the form of excuses I could use to get out of it. Although I finished work late and had the perfect excuse not to go I remembered my resolution and set off to the pub with a grave face.

All of the familiar feelings arose as I set off. Maybe there would be nobody there, perhaps I had the wrong date, maybe I’d get drunk and embarrass myself or maybe they’d all realise I was a crazy and not even want me in their normal people group. All perfectly rational thinking you understand.

When I arrived as I feared there was nobody there and I took shelter in my phone while I wondered what to do. Luckily however, before I’d had a chance to make haste and do a runner the leader of the group spotted me and welcomed me over. Everyone seemed nice and friendly and there was no immediate question on my sanity.

We managed to get a separate room so there felt less pressure to drink and with the music turned off we got to work on the book. There were introductions that were largely initiated by me as I love them; I am afraid of new things but never afraid to speak out.

There are to be it seems no rules to the book club and the conversation as such flows nicely with diversions about films, travels and how we all came to live in Harborough. There are people from Leeds, London and even as far away as Melton Mowbray. It feels like rather a jolly little group and my fears about getting far too tipsy are reassured when a man says he does not drink. There is something about this that makes it feel okay that I only have a glass of wine rather than a bottle.

The book that has been chosen for us to read is Bill Bryson, At Home and considering that I am soon to have a home I am excited. The reason I wanted to join a book club is because although I studied English and American Literature at University I’ve never discussed a book purely for pleasure and it seems that a book club is the place to do this.

It would seem from tonight that embracing the new is a good thing to do. Even though I am worrying about mortgages and weight issues all of these worries are taken away for two hours of my day and it feels great to be in a club and not have hidden in a car park to escape it. Progress indeed!

At work I get to use a new piece of stationary for the first time and I am so happy that I insist on telling everyone. My positive attitude continues through the day and stories I had worried were too complex come easily on to the page.

I have another meeting with a mortgage provider and am happy because she seems just as delighted as me at the fact that this will be my first real home. My sister drops the monster off, otherwise known as the baby, so she can go shopping and even his bad temper fails to erase my good cheer to the world at large. I smile at people in the streets even when they look like they want to kill me for polluting their air with my smoke.

Instead of sneaking off to bed when I return home I make the dinner, go for a little walk with my mother and even avoid turning to the fridge for comfort. In a mood of creativity I learn how to knit a basic stitch out of sky blue wool and although it is hard I feel as though I have really achieved something.

Knitting is meant to be quite a therapeutic past time and I am hoping that this new skill will help me through both the highs and lows by giving me something to focus upon. Perhaps I will knit myself a pair of shoes or even a scarf although at the rate I am going it will be next winter before I feel the benefit.

Feeling great and full of sunshine and depression is well and truly at bay.

I wake early with a little bit of a hangover and the day just sort of goes down hill from there. I do all the things I can to try and keep the blues away. I have a good breakfast, get dressed and put on the new shoes for the start of this week and even much to my mother’s amusement take the dog for a walk. I never actually ever do this.

The boy leaves and I am left in a bit of a state because I don’t want him to go. The poor sod is probably glad to leave considering how much of a grump I am in. I yelled at him for daring to suggest the floor of our house was anything but wood – it turned out it is not.

I give up on the day early and too tired and miserable to even take the photos I find myself eating cheese, chocolate and other comfort foods which don’t help and only leave me feeling fat.

I take to my room by 8pm bringing with me a Mars bar and the weight of the world. Even looking at a home magazine does me no good and that is saying something as I was delighted when the boy bought it for me.

I am fed up of the boots, the project and fear that I will never receive donations of shoes and that it will all fall flat and I will fail to make any money at all for charity. This saddens me and I find myself willfully escaping into Wolf Hall and the court of King Henry VIII.

My poor mother comes in to see if I am okay and my father attempts to talk to me about mortgages but my head is a mess and I take so little of it in that he ends up having to write it all down for fear I will forget.

I hate days like these and can only hope tomorrow will bring brighter times.

This week’s shoes are a pair of boots by Fly. In one of the pictures my mother has taken my head off but I cannot blame her as I took hers off on several occasions throughout the day.

After a gin and tonic that I polish off for old times sake me and the boy move on to our bottle of wine. I drink slowly but it’s ever so strong and the food is taking ever so long and before I know it I’m more than just a little bit tipsy.

Alcohol does not always suit me. I get louder than usual, forget that I can’t sing and yet all my troubles fade away. Before the start of the meal I am fretting about mortgages and house prices but by the end of it I have forgotten all of this and my only thought is of chocolate and sweet things and listening to more Ed Sheeran something the boy seems delighted about.

I worry about getting drunk because it is not so much my tendency to be a bit of a lark when la la, it is how I tend to feel the next day. Alcohol is not exactly the best thing to mix with tablets and a hangover can even send you on a low. However it is not often that I find myself so merry and so even if there is a little bit of pay back tomorrow I’ve had a wonderful evening and when the food finally came it was luscious.

Today’s outfit is that which I wore on the day I did The Sun photo shoot. The bag is my new knitting bag with which I am really rather taken with which may well be evident here.

A while ago, just before Christmas I took a Bipolar Awareness Course which was designed in Wales. On the first day I went I had to be practically dragged there kicking and screaming and it was only because my mum dropped me off and promised to pick me up that I went.

The course turned out to be the best thing I’ve ever done. As a result of it I have learned so much more about my illness and now finally accept the fact that I am bipolar and that I do need to take medication to manage it.

When I was first diagnosed I didn’t really believe that I needed to take the medication to control the highs as I wasn’t entirely convinced that I really experienced them, although everyone else would have disagreed. Following the course I understand so much more about my illness and how to manage it. I also now believe that it is something that can be managed and because of this control I have never considered suicide since.

The CPN is proud of me as she sees a change in me too. She says that I have matured with my illness. I no longer fluctuate in mood so severely and even though I had a high during the course I was able to control it and even managed to avoid the subsequent crippling low.

I am a carrier of an illness, an illness that kills one in ten of those who have it but I am in control and that feels good.

Today’s outfit was chosen because the boy is coming down. Both he and the CPN worry that I have been buying more shoes but these are just a pair that I had kept in hiding. The dress is by Calvin Klein and was one that I couldn’t bear to part with at the dress sale. I bought it while I was in the States and went without food for a day just to have it. The tights are a pair that my mum got me from a charity shop. They are white and I think that they really show off the shoes with their gold platform and fine buckles really well.

It is amazing to think of these kinds of figures, to think that really this might actually be a possibility after all. I had begun to lose hope and had started to drop like a stone.

When I return to the office I am full of the joys of winter and even my colleagues can see the difference in me and ask whether it was good news. I try to reply modestly but I am so thrilled that it all pours out.

I remembered one of my worry tricks this morning. One that tells you to imagine things, as bad as they seem, all being good in a year after you have had time to pick up the pieces. The problem was that my year plan had involved buying sofas, a garden bed and a shed and none of these things would tie in with not having a home, although the shed may have been useful perhaps.

Instead now it seems that my little home could soon be a reality and I have to thank for it so many people who have supported me including my Grandma, my dad, my mum and just so many others who kept the faith.

Being bipolar is a bit of a bitch but I really do believe that if you really work to maintain good relationships, even when you are as high as a kite and think you need nobody, it really is an illness that can be managed and indeed survived.

It doesn’t all have to be sadness and insanity. It can be a wonderful life and the sun will always come out again no matter how dark things might feel. Just don’t forget there are always sunbeams around the corner.

Today’s shoes are from my favorite maker, Kurt Geiger himself. You will be seeing a lot from this designer over the coming year as I am a KG addict and own quite a few pairs. The only thing that worries me is many of the pairs I own are really rather high and I am not sure how my boss and colleagues are going to feel when I totter into the office in six-inch heels. But hey, it’s for charity and if I have to go Otter Spotting again I can always go bare foot!

Anger is such a destructive emotion and it does not help that I am directing it towards people I perceive to be giving me dirty looks because I am smoking like a trooper or the kids that nearly run me over on their bikes. It is tiring being angry and because of all my worries I am not sleeping so well and so my fuse is short.

Rather than dwelling on the present I find myself desperately looking back in an attempt to find some meaning in my life. It starts slowly and happily. I look at my sister’s first photos and remember that now I am an aunt and that this is something which gives me more of a feeling of purpose in the world than I could have ever imagined.

It soon descends into sadness however when I come across my other sister’s photo album. I forgot how ill she became and how much she changed in her looks. There is a picture early on in the album when she has long hair and a full figure. She is playing with a pair of crutches that belonged to a friend of hers and I begin to sob at the thought that just months later she would have crutches of her own and would struggle to walk unaided.

I look at the holiday we had by the coast when she was so sick she had to tell us what was possibly the worse news not only for us but for her. We are walking on the pier and dressed in each others clothes. She was in pain, I know she was but she is smiling for the camera and larking about while I look like an adolescent grumpy teenager.

My sister was still beautiful even then and I remember on the holiday going to the hospital to buy razors because she wanted to wear a brand new skirt and her using her Disability Living Allowance to buy two beautiful pairs of Ravel shoes.

I would hope that in some ways this habit I have of looking back when I am down would do me good but it doesn’t. I emerge from the room of memories in a cloak of sadness that I fail to shake off despite trying with tears falling from my face to dance to Coldplay.

Looking back is a necessary part of going forward but why does it have to hurt so very much?

I scat around the river bank, clinging on to a tree for dear life while I attempt to get footage of what now appears to be three otters playing on the ice of the River Welland in Market Harborough. They are really rather cute, once you get over the giant rat fear, and I soon find myself enjoying my filming. unfortunately half way through filming I realise I am complete amateur and have in-fact been filming my finger. I try again but the naughty little things have gone into hiding.

All of a sudden I spot a vantage point on the other side of the river. Sensing a rustling I mount the bank and clamber back up to the pavement, narrowly avoiding dropping my iPhone into the depths of the river. It is quite shallow but for dramatic purposes let’s say it’s deep, deep enough that I don’t fancy going paddling in it anyway.

I run past commuters on the bridge and even develop an otter call using smooching sounds from my lips. They appear to like it and by the time I reach the other side they are out to play again. I get a bit of footage but realise it could well be a rat so call the office for reinforcements and our video camera.

My colleague comes rushing out and we stand there for ages as we wait for the otters to emerge and our fingers go numb with the cold. All of a sudden we hear a crack of the ice and one surfaces and skids towards us raising its head at the camera and behaves in a truly delightful manner. Before we know it there are three of them once more all playing together and alone and one even begins to wrestle with a beer bottle.

We get some really good footage and although it is quite dark it is a unmissable moment and one that I hope will attract people to the river to come and see the otter family. I love my job. I don’t love these shoes.

http://www.harboroughmail.co.uk/news/local-news/video_otters_seen_in_the_river_welland_1_3428051