61 Quotes by Katherine May

When I’m stressed, it feels like my brain has turned to porridge and it’s coming out of my ears. The drugs for my bipolar never really stopped that. Cold water does.

This has been a long journey for me, and swimming is just one of the changes I’ve made. I’ve cut out sugar, I make sure I get plenty of alone time, I go on long walks, and I’ve stopped saying yes to everybody. I’ve cut down my working hours. All of these things make a buffer, and I say I like to keep my buffer broad. Sometimes problems come up that narrow my buffer, and then I have to make sure I build it up again. Keeping well is almost a full-time job. But I have a wonderful life.

This isn’t about getting you fixed. This is about you living the best life you can with the parameters that you have.

You need to live a life that you can cope with, not the one that other people want. Start saying no. Just do one thing a day. No more than two social events in a week.

I don’t power on through, I don’t put up a facade, and I don’t keep it in. I take a couple of days off and look after myself until I’m well again. I go to the sea, make sure I’m getting some good nutrition, cancel all my appointments, and rest until I’m better. I know what to do.

You need to live a life that you can cope with, not the one that other people want.

I’m tired, inevitably. But it’s more than that. I’m hollowed out. I’m tetchy and irritable, constantly feeling like prey, believing that everything is urgent and that I can never do enough. And my house—my beloved home—has suffered a kind of entropy in which everything has slowly collapsed and broken and worn out, with detritus collecting on every surface and corner, and I have been helpless in the face of it.

The problem with “everything” is that it ends up looking an awful lot like nothing: just one long haze of frantic activity, with all the meaning sheared away. Time has passed so quickly while I have been raising a child and writing books, and working a full-time job that often sprawls into my weekends, that I can’t quite account for it. The preceding years are not a blank exactly, but they’re certainly a blur, and one that’s strangely devoid of meaning, except for a clawing sense of survival.

I want to disappear. I’m almost desperate to find a way to absent myself easily from the situation, like cutting around my outline with a craft knife and cleanly excising myself from the record.