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    A Life In Bits
    A Life In Bits
    A Life In Bits
    Ebook117 pages1 hour

    A Life In Bits

    By Charles McMullen

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    About this ebook

    A Life In Bits is the moving story of one man's battle with bipolar disorder, a condition whose devastating consequences are still not fully appreciated by the world at large. Charles McMullen’s battle with manic depression, as it is often known, began with a nervous breakdown at the age of nineteen. In his twenties, the suicide of his brother, his own divorce and the loss of his job and his home put him inside a psychiatric hospital. Yet despite the periods of appalling despair and the continued setbacks, Charles can still write at the end of the book ‘Overall, it’s been a pretty happy life’. This inspirational book will be of great interest to anyone who is afflicted by bipolar disorder, or knows one of the many people – roughly one in 25 of the population - who are.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMereo Books
    Release dateMar 24, 2015
    ISBN9781861511416
    A Life In Bits

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      Book preview

      A Life In Bits - Charles McMullen

      CHARLES MCMULLEN

      A LIFE IN BITS

      The memoirs of a cheerful bipolar

      Copyright ©2014 by Charles McMullen

      Smashwords Edition

      First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Mereo Books, an imprint of Memoirs Publishing

      Charles McMullen has asserted his right under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

      A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover, other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

      The address for Memoirs Publishing Group Limited can be found at www.memoirspublishing.com

      The Memoirs Publishing Group Ltd Reg. No. 7834348

      Mereo Books

      1A The Wool Market Dyer Street Cirencester Gloucestershire GL7 2PR

      An imprint of Memoirs Publishing

      www.mereobooks.com

      ISBN: 978-1-86151-141-6

      CONTENTS

      Foreword

      Introduction

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Epilogue

      Foreword

      From the River Itchen’s waters and the forest green Hampshire parks to the sunny sea and the seaside of the south coast.

      From the busy, vibrant streets of Southampton to the venerable abbeys and later to the peaceful nights spent next to the fireplace.

      From the sweet family weekends through the grim lonely Mondays to the endless hardworking weekdays.

      From the early childhood years through the freshness of youth to the maturity of adulthood.

      From the harsh but promising post-war reality through the carefree 60s and 70s to the roads of self-awareness of the mazy and rocky 90s and 2000s.

      From the happy moments of births and marriages to the sorrows of divorces and deaths of loved ones.

      From all the good times to all the bad times of which I am sure some of us have had more than a fair share.

      From all the highs to all the lows of a bipolar life, a very wavy thing indeed, as life itself can be; through the author’s vivid narration accompanied with songs like Spirit in the Sky or Shirley Bassey’s melodies in the background, the bipolar myth was demystified.

      From the bottom of my heart I want to thank Charles McMullen for the honest, bittersweet time trip he has offered us, I hope that he will return again with some of his future chapters of life, because I think that the best is yet to come.

      Miltiadis E Papamichail - October 2013

      Introduction

      This book describes one man's progress through a life less ordinary. Charles was born into a working-class Hampshire family. He also has bipolar illness and, as a result, has lived a life that was very different from the one he might reasonably have expected. This book describes his 1960s childhood, teenage years and early adult life. It describes the ups and downs of living with bipolar illness, the highs but also the lows and the personal tragedies that have cast a shadow over his life.

      I have known Charles for a very long time now and have been involved in some of the events he describes in this book. It gives a hugely interesting insight into one human story behind the label and will be of interest to anyone who knows someone who has experience of serious mental illness - and that probably means all of us.

      Dr Steve Brown

      November 2013

      Chapter One

      I drew my first breath on Thursday 24th March 1955 between 2 and 4 am, the same date as Harry Houdini, who like me had a few narrow escapes. I was, so I’m told by my relatives, ‘born with a smile on my face’.

      The happy event happened in Rookwood Maternity Hospital, Allbrook, Eastleigh in the beautiful county of Hampshire, very close to the River Itchen, which would later be a close friend in my life. This small cottage hospital, finished between 1976 and 1977, is now a residential close called The Paddock.

      Ann Maria, Mike and me in the prefab at 32 the Hundred

      Ann Maria and me on the beach at Bournemouth

      I would later return there on 20th June 1959 with my father in a taxi (we weren’t used to such grand transport) for the birth of my younger brother, Michael. A similar place name, Rooksdown, would also feature prominently in my life in another way as you will read later on.

      Michael was such a bundle of fun to take home to my older sister, Ann Maria, and my mother, Barbara. In the late

      1950s we lived in a prefab, allocated to my dad by Eastleigh Council after he was demobbed at the end of the Second World War. The address was 32 The Hundred, as there were a hundred prefabs on the estate.

      The place we lived was right opposite Eastleigh Technical College as it was being built, which is now called Cheriton Road off Chestnut Avenue. Down the way near Fleming Park, near the end of Stoneham Lane, were a few old picturesque thatched cottages which are still there to this day. Our home was quite near to Eastleigh Airport (now Southampton International) where Silver City planes would fly to Paris and open up at the front to let the cars in.

      One of my earliest memories is of my Dad lathering up his face ready for a shave and I’m in my pram laughing at him as he plays Father Christmas. Another is of me and Ann Maria eating banana sandwiches with sugar on and drinking junkets (a sweet food made from milk which was popular in the past). After mass on Sundays, Dad would often take me down Nutbeam Road to see the bright

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