January 2020, another manic phase forces me to be hospitalised. I panick in the ambulance, the sirene is too loud. They give me a pill. I am numb. When I meet the doctor there, I recognise her even though she must have lost 30 kg. She was my colleague at the psychiatric hospital where i work. She asked if it is a problem for me. I say no but i was not too confortable. She tells me i am not bipolar and i should follow a keto diet to help with my mood swings instead of taking lithium. So does that mean that i am not bipolar anymore? I have been taking lithium for nothing? I leave the hospital with hope and half of my usual prescription requirement. I feel on top of the world and i quit my meds altogether. I feel intensely alive, creative and confident. I go to work and talk to everyone without filters. Then confusion takes over i don t know who i am anymore, my colleagues try to talk to me. I decompensate in session worrying all my patients. The same day I am hospitalised again in a different clinic which gave me the usual treatment i have been taking for 10 year. I guess i am still bipolar after all.

“We think you are up too up” said my boss and his colleague doctor after a meeting at the mental health hospital where I have been working for 13 years now. You laughed too hard, we have never seen you like that! We know you are bipolar because we read your medical file when you were hospitalized last year! This is important information you can give to your psychiatrist.”

So I am in a manic phase because I laughed too hard at a meeting. Last year I was laughing too and according to my boss I was inadequate. In one case I was manic, in the other I was not but to my boss this did not make any difference. Whenever you are diagnosed as bipolar any loud emotion is potentially a symptom of your illness. So does that mean I am not allowed to laugh anymore?

As a bipolar how am I allowed to express feelings without anyone reducing me to a diagnostic? How many decibels should my laugh be? Am I allowed to show tears? Fear? or should I act like a robot in order to avoid a medical label. Who am I? A person, an illness? An underdog?

By the way, the featured image you see is a collage I made a couple days after the discussion with my boss. “Qu’est-ce qu’elle a ma gueule?” means “What’s wrong with my face?” Underneath the picture I wrote “you choose” in reference to people judging me. I changed it into “I choose” to remind myself to stop letting people define who I am according to their subjective view. Finally I added the sentence “Be your weirdest self”as an empowering statement to anyone who believes “normal” is an absurd, boring concept!