What have you been up to?

When you meet old friends and they say ‘what have you been up to’, what do you say? I saw a picture that an old friend put on Facebook today – it was of three dogs running along and in the comments she had commented to someone about how they should take the dogs out for a walk together one day. I giggled to myself and went to comment to say ‘cor you’re getting old’! Only in a joking way! I didn’t. Not because I was worried of her reaction, she would have laughed. I was worried all that she’d ask how I’d been and what I’d been up to. I thought about it for a while. Oh, why you’ve been getting old, I’ve been going crazy! Is that right! No that’s not right because I’ve been crazy since the day I met her, it’s just I have recently been diagnosed as being officially crazy. That’s the difference. 

The picture that we see so often stating ‘I’m still the same person I was before you knew I was crazy’, most people would show to their loved ones, old friends, colleagues. Me, I say it to myself each day. I have to remind myself that I’m not just crazy. I’m still me, just with medication to take away my bad bits now. I am still the same person I have been all my adult life, I just have help to make me a little better now. When I get upset and wonder, ‘why me’? I remind myself that I’m no different to what I was a year ago, or ten years ago. I just have a diagnosis now – sort of, I still don’t know quite how mental I am, that’s still being analysed! 

Anyway, I didn’t comment through fear of not knowing how to answer a simple question. Hopefully one day I won’t be scared to comment. She knows I’m crazy anyway, I always have been!