A Broken Outline — Being an Observer in My Own Life: Notes from a Service User

Abstract

As I leant forward to blow out the candles on my cake I took an extra deep breath realising that this marked the point where I would have spent more of my life suffering from serious illness than I had not. It was my 30th birthday. I currently hold the dual diagnosis of having an Autistic Spectrum Disorder and Rapid Cycling Bipolar Disorder. I have spent much of my adult life haunted by the difficulty of defining myself as me…as a woman, as a friend, a daughter, a sister and aunt, a colleague, while battling these conditions that are so intrinsically interwoven with the very fabric of who I am. This is both on an organically physical level and also in the perceptions of myself in society and to my family and friends.