How it is to be a Balancing Bipolar

Until recently, I never experienced the stigma attached to being bipolar. Heck, it’s even stated in my CV that I am a Balancing Bipolar. I’ve been working in the advertising & communication industry for 20+ years now and done very well to have reached the Creative Director position. Until recently.

I experienced deep depression while working and living as an expat. It didn’t hinder my work but my time alone was different. Somehow, my family got wind of my situation and learned how bad it was. BUT. I. DID. NOT. WANT. TO. GO. HOME.

Although I would exercise daily thinking it would boost my mood, it was not enough. I would be able to go to work, attend meetings and campaign presentations, help brainstorm. But at the end once I step into the car and reach my flat, all I had in mind was how to kill myself. So to keep my sanity I wrote poetry and posted it in one Bipolar support group I joined. But it wasn’t enough. I still had my suicide planned. Then one-off my depressing poems reached my family through a doctor friend in NY who was so worried he sent it to my family. I had actually withdrawn from my social media accounts except from the Bipolar community and Medium. I didn’t answer my friends’ messages but put up a front when my family communicated with me. Thus, my family’s intervention. I had to be brought back home upon my doctors’ recommendation. The company I was working as an expat in was very supportive. Or so they seemed. I flew back home with my mother and was brought straight to the hospital.

After three intensive weeks of starting medication again and psychotherapy, I was cleared by my doctors that I can go back to work but with a family member staying with me for the time being until my next assessment. But the bad news came right after. My company had decided not to renew my contract. Their reasons were not even valid. My immediate boss, the Chief Creative Officer, even defended me and my work to the management committee. But it fell on deaf ears. I lost my job under the guise of being a non-performing asset despite my work accomplishments as my CCO stated. So I knew it was because of my mental illness.

Now in my quest to help lessen the stigma that accompanies mental illness, I am glad to be a part of a friend’s pet project on depression. This video is a teaser for the project to get the funding it needs so that we can do a more exhaustive campaign on mental illness – to help society have a better understanding of how it is to have mental illness and to help people like me be not afraid to come out of our closets and get the help and support that we most certainly need.