We all create boxes to live in, zones in mind and body that are comfortable, and no one does that more markedly than I.

I had a nervous breakdown in 1993, the result of ignoring life-long depression and a host of more recent life traumas.  I was diagnosed as having Bi-Polar Disorder and, actually, that was okay with me.  As a youngster, I had suffered several episodes that were described as ‘nervous exhaustion’.   Only now do I recognise them for what they were, depressive episodes. 

Now, with my diagnosis, I have a label I can drag out; “I am bi-polar,” sounds so much more medical than “I suffer from depression.”  Tell someone you are depressed, and they will tell you to get out more, pull yourself together, join an evening class, and tomorrow it will all be brighter.  Clinical depression isn’t like that.  It isn’t rational; it doesn’t listen to reason, no matter how intelligent you are.  And because you cannot rationalise it, you feel guilty for being depressed, as if you are failing in yet another aspect of your life.  Only those who have been there truly understand the absolute despair involved.  When I tell people I am bi-polar though, they make allowances for me, they let me stay in my boxes.  

Looking back I see all the boxes I have made over the years.  First of course I had to push people aside to give me room for the boxes.  Everywhere I have lived since 1993, has been a box.  Mayfield House was a lovely old house I had converted into two flats.  My front door looked out over the garden and I enclosed it in a high fence and put a gate at the side of the house.  The only window that looked out onto a path at the side, I curtained with lace curtains, but usually kept the full curtains pulled on that – not entirely unreasonable since I had caught several people peering in – we Scots are nosy.

Then I moved into Post Office House while I was the Post Mistress.  I really hated that house.  It was a three storey town house, above the Post Office, and was built in the 18th century; in-fill on what had been a medieval market place.  That in-fill part is important, because there was a road behind it, a road in front of it and a road to one side.  The other side was attached to the chip shop and owner’s house.