by Cam Lucadou-Wells
Dandenong resident Jacqui Swallow’s memoir The Bipolar Runner is unflinchingly raw and honest.
So raw that her publisher recommend her to tone down the most telling of lowpoints.
But in characteristically courageous fashion, Swallow insisted on an uncensored retelling.
It includes a “humiliating” passage on how she was locked in an isolation unit in a psychiatric ward. With just a mattress, no pillow.
“You have to behave badly to be put in there. And when I was put in there, my behaviour was even worse.”
She wants to explode myths such as the “terror” around mental illness and psych wards.
“Hospital is not that bad. You play Uno to pass time – it’s very boring but it’s not scary at all.
“You don’t feel confronted or threatened. Everything is well handled. You don’t feel like you’re surrounded by ‘crazy people’ – they’re people like you.”
There are other myths to pop, such as mental illness being only caused by trauma or a bad upbringing. Swallow describes her own childhood as idyllic.
Or the fiction that “we bring it on ourselves” with drinking, drugs and bad lifestyle choices. “I’m the healthiest person I know and I still suffer from mental illness.”
Or that “we can’t function, we can’t work, we can’t have relationships, have families or contribute to the community”.
“If we are medicated, have the right people supporting us – professionals, friends and family – there’s no reason a person with mental illness can’t function.”
And one specifically for those who have bipolar, schizophrenia or psychosis and can suffer “delusions of grandeur” – don’t stop following their dreams.
“It’s OK to have big goals and big ambitions. Just because you do, it doesn’t mean you’re manic or psychotic.”
Swallow has lived with bipolar disorder since her teens, as well as intense depression and anxiety.
She also has a great knack for dreaming large.
Last year, she was featured in Star Journal for raising $4500 for mental health agency Beyond Blue while running six hours in the Melbourne Marathon.
She’s now taken to writing her debut book – to show how running had helped her manage debilitating mental health issues.
“I found it really cathartic,” she says of writing her memoir.
“It was highly personal. I was writing daily so it was like a journey in processing memories from the past.”
She was spurred into running since she was spurred by the film Brittany Runs a Marathon – in which the lead character goes from unfit and overweight to a marathon runner.
It was life-changing, she says.
“At the time I myself was obese. I had tried everything to lose weight and nothing worked.
“As soon as I finished watching the movie, I went for a run.”
She used to be unable to walk up hills. As she trained, she started to run up the same slopes.
She celebrated those little milestones, as well as bigger ones such as Melbourne Marathon and her book.
“I go through the whole gamut. I feel shame, regret, embarrassment, pride – every single emotion you can imagine. But mostly pride.
“I hope it will encourage people with mental illness to run, as well as people who see themselves as not athletic.”
An avid reader, she sought memoirs by people with bipolar, and found celebrities like Carrie Fisher and Stephen Fry or superstar athletes.
What she aimed to do with The Bipolar Runner was to fill a gap – a story by an everyday person who really talked about their feelings and emotions.
“There’s people in my life like my mum and my partner who don’t have mental illness and they just don’t know what it’s like. It’s completely out of their experience.
“Reading a whole book, they can then go: ‘OK, I get it’.”
The Bipolar Runner is available from Fair Play Publishing and QBD Books.
A book launch with Jacqui Swallow will be held at Sandown Park Hotel on Friday 11 October, 6pm-8pm. RSVP: form.jotform.com/242400699794871
