So, 2023 draws to a close today. And even though it brought its dose of sad and unwanted events, as every year does, it has been one of the best years I’ve had in recent memory. A whole, entire calendar year without a slump in my mood! I cannot actually ascertain when was the last time this happened. I believe it was a decade ago, although that is questionable.

This was the year in which I was able to tick so many items off my list of ‘things to do’ because I cut down my working days to four. A year when I thrived in my paid work because of the reduced pressure, and managed well even when the pressure mounted. Among the items that I ticked off my personal list was the publication of my novel, Exuberance, as a paperback, thus realising my dream of being a ‘published author’. Because even though I had released Exuberance as eBook ten years ago, it didn’t feel real, not until I published the ‘real book’. A book that you can hold in your hands, slide off the shelf, whose pages you can fan and flip with your fingertips, that can be physically signed with a pen. But most importantly, a book that has given me a reason to get out there and speak about mental health. To tell all and sundry, finally, the ‘secret’ only those who are very close to me have known for 25 years: that I have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, a mental health condition that is still somewhat shrouded in a cloud of stigma.  

When the eBook was released in 2013, I wasn't ready to openly discuss that, despite being a work of fiction, Exuberance draws its insights into bipolar disorder from my lived experience. Consequently, it wasn’t promoted as much as it deserved. Fear of stigma and its potential impact on my career in communications and media held me back. Establishing a career in this field was already challenging as someone with English as a second language, who speaks with a distinct foreign accent. Over the years, I've been fortunate to hold excellent positions as a Media and Communications Professional in the non-profit sector, using my writing skills to advocate for positive social change. Exuberance shares a similar purpose, by aiming to start conversations, shift perspectives and increase awareness surrounding mental health - while telling an entertaining story with well-rounded characters and surprising turns.

I’m currently employed at a great organisation where my manager encouraged me to pursue my passions and dreams (thanks, Kelly!). Since Exuberance was launched, it has been rewarding to finally share my story with colleagues, ex-colleagues, friends and strangers, emphasising that, with the right treatment, care and support, one can lead a fulfilling, productive life living with bipolar.

Of course, I am aware that I have a mild case of this ‘disorder’ and that I was extremely fortunate to have found all three of the elements mentioned above: effective treatment, fantastic mental health professionals and the support of family and friends. This is a serious illness that can have disastrous consequences, not just for the person who lives with it, but all those around them; and I do not in any way belittle that. While I recognise my experience cannot be generalised, I hope it contributes to a better understanding of the condition, and to help reduce the stigma around it.

It is also important to mention that I have bipolar type 2, which is the milder type. Even during the worst of my depressions, I have never felt suicidal. During the highs – which I experienced only a few times at the beginning – I was never fully manic, but hypomanic. I have never been psychotic, or hospitalised, or even missed a day of work because of this illness. And yet, I still caused significant pain and disruption in the lives of those who loved me, those who worked with me, and many of those who crossed paths with me after the disorder first manifested itself in 1998 and before we found the right treatment in 2000.

It helped that my symptoms were straight out of the text book: after going through two full cycles of my illness, it was easy enough to identify what I had, though finding a suitable medication took a bit longer.

I was incredibly fortunate that we landed on a prescription drug that works well for me without affecting my cognitive abilities or dulling my senses. It has side effects, but they are not intolerable. Having said that, the mood stabilisers have worked very well to inhibit the highs, but they don’t shield me completely from the depressions. I am social, happy and productive, involved in a thousand activities for 10-11 months of the year, but for decades, I have had at least one annual episode of mild to medium depression, usually in Spring. They key words here are mild to medium. The 'episodes' disrrupt my life, but they don't stop it. Most people around me don't know they are taking place. This is mainly because, over the years, I have equipped myself with a list of tools and strategies, which are great all year round but particularly at these times:

• Stay in touch with people – do not isolate yourself: let them know how you are feeling and why you might be less social than usual, instead of cutting them off.
• Keep active: Getting out every day to do a walk, regardless of the weather, can make a huge difference.
• Keep a journal – once you put down your fears on paper, they are not nearly as overwhelming as they were inside your head.
• When you feel worthless, write a list of your many achievements.
• When worrisome thoughts keep you awake at night, practise meditation.
• Put things into perspective – don’t catastrophise or dramatise them.
• Remember the Spanish proverb:  vivir con miedo es vivir a medias - ‘A life lived in fear is a life half lived.’
• Turn your negative thoughts around – think of the glass as half-full instead of half-empty.
• And most important of all, remember your mantra: This too, shall pass.

2023 has been magical for many reasons, too many to enumerate in this blog entry. But a huge highlight was that I made it through the entire year without going through an episode of depression, not even a tiny one. Perhaps finally sharing the truth about the real-life story that inspired Exuberance has been that catharsis I needed… that, and understanding that the ups and downs of life are what make the journey worthwhile.

Photo by MariaAge of Pixabay

​"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost. 

How many times have you found yourself at a fork in the road and no matter how impetuous or carefully considered your decision was, you couldn’t help but wonder (either at the time or further down the track) what course would your life have taken had you chosen the other path?

Some such decisions might be momentous, such as a career change, moving to another country, saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a business or a marriage proposition. Some might be deadly, as was the case of Alberto Dominguez (the first Australian to die in the September 11 attacks), who at the last minute decided to delay his plane back from the US to Australia by one day, and ended up aboard American Airlines flight 11 when it plunged into one of the towers of the World Trade Centre. And conversely, I remember reading the stories of people who were meant to be in the towers at the time of the attacks, but had missed their bus, or woken up with a cold, or decided to spend the day with their lover instead of going to work – and had no idea of what happened until they received frantic calls from their family (or their wife!) wanting to know if they were alive.

In the movie ‘Sliding Doors’ it is not even a conscious decision, but the simple fact that she misses a train that sets the main character’s life in a different direction. We get to see both futures taking place, and in both futures she finds her way to Mr Nice Guy and out of the clutches of her cheating boyfriend. The German film “Run, Lola, Run” explores three variations of one story, in which minimal things, such as brushing someone’s arm in the street by accident, can cause not just your own future but the other person’s to change in radical ways.

Moving countries from Bolivia to Australia in 1988 was one of the most distinctive forks in the path of my lifetime, and I often wonder what would life had been like if I stayed in Bolivia and pursued a career as a concert pianist. Among the friends who stayed some became renowned opera singers, directors, composers, and one even an internationally famous rock star; whereas I abandoned my career in music when it became too difficult to pursue it in a country where musicians were light-years ahead of me in their training. Admittedly many of my musician friends in Bolivia were not as successful as the others, and struggled to make ends meet; and even some of the successful ones often had to supplement their income doing other jobs.
But even before that, straight out of school, I studied two years of psychology at university. Had I stayed, would I be writing articles for research journals and transforming people’s lives through counselling, as many of the graduates from my class are doing now?

The internationally successful rock star happened to be the young man I was dating before I left the country. At the time, he didn’t even have enough money to buy his own guitar. If I stayed in Bolivia, would I have gone onto marry the rock star? Would he had become a rock star at all, with me pulling him back, perhaps with one or two children in tow? He never married, although I heard that he had a child ‘out of wedlock’ with another celebrity, a television presenter.

I also wonder sometimes whether, if I had married a different man 26 years ago – freshly arrived in Australia - instead of my ex-husband, would I now have the happy family, the kids and the white picket fenced house in the suburbs? Somehow, I think not. Even back then, in my early twenties, I don’t remember ever dreaming this ‘Arcadian’ ideal...

I do remember however sitting for the public service test within months of my arrival. Sometime later a letter arrived offering me a job in the public sector, but by then I had already obtained employment in a private company. I dismissed the letter, not knowing how difficult it would be to enter the public service if you were not already in the system. Many a time in the years that followed I applied for government jobs and didn’t’ even get as far as the interview. Who knows, had I accepted that job offer, I could now be in the Senior Executive Service of Australia…. or, on the other hand, I could be working as a teller at the post office. Either way, I most probably wouldn’t have met the friends and colleagues I now have, I wouldn’t have achieved the things that I’ve achieved in the private and later in the not-for-profit sectors; I would not be working for a highly respected charity, helping disadvantaged people transform their lives, and using my writing skills for a great cause.
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Having faced another distinctive fork in the road recently I asked a friend: “how can I know the decision I am making is right?” And she said, whether it is right or wrong, you have to “make it right”. Once you follow one course, you have to decide that this was the right course, and make it work, without looking back. I thought that was pretty sound advice. What is the use of dwelling on what could’ve, should’ve or would’ve have been?

Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges tackled this subject in his short story “The Garden of the Forking Paths”, in which one of the characters analyses Ts’ui Pên’s fictional masterpiece, a novel that is apparently nonsensical, contradictory and chaotic, and explains that:

“In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts'ui Pên, he chooses - simultaneously- all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork. Here, then, is the explanation of the novel's contradictions. Fang, let us say, has a secret; a stranger calls at his door; Fang resolves to kill him. Naturally, there are several possible outcomes: Fang can kill the intruder, the intruder can kill Fang, they both can escape, they both can die, and so forth. In the work of Ts'ui Pên, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure for other forkings.”

Each time I am confronted with a fork, or even a branch in the road, this is what I would like to believe: that another version of me has chosen each of the other paths; and thus, there is one of me who is a concert pianist, another an eminent psychologist, another a bohemian artist, another a happy stay-at-home mother, another a senior government executive, another a rock star’s groupie… and so on. In all the versions, I am, and will always be, a writer.

The movie 'Hector and the Search for Happiness' (based on the book by François Lelord), whilst not a cinematic masterpiece, was for me one of those thought-provoking, laugh-inducing and, at times, tear-jerking films that made me consider, long after we had left the theatre, one of the age long questions - What Is Happiness?

In the spirit of 'Eat, Pray, Love', Hector (Simon Pegg), a psychiatrist, leaves the perfectly organised, regimented life he shares with his girlfriend Clara, and sets out to find the meaning of happiness; a journey that will take him to a monastery in China, a hospital in Africa, and to a reunion with his old university 'flame' in Los Angeles. 

Wherever he goes, he takes a journal where he writes down the lessons learnt from all the people he meets along the way. These characters range from a hideously rich businessman, to a penniless young prostitute, an old wise monk, a dangerous drug dealer, an African grandmother, a world expert in happiness, and a terminally ill woman who is undertaking her last journey.

As to be expected, Hector discovers that Happiness means something different to everyone. In the case of the African woman, happiness is as simple as cooking a pot of sweet potato stew and sharing it with her large family. He also discovers that happiness encompasses a range of emotions, including those considered negative; such as sadness, fear and pain.

When I think of the elusive concept of happiness, I always remember the lines uttered by Clarissa Vaughan, a character from another movie, 'The Hours' (based on the book by Michael Cunningham) when she admits to her daughter that she hasn’t been happy in a very long time:

I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself "this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more." It never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then...

The Hours was not a happy movie, according to the half a dozen people who came with me and who cursed me for months for choosing it; in fact some of them are still holding it against me. But a decade on, I still remember the lesson I took away from it, and find myself constantly catching and enjoying that fleeting moment, which is not the beginning of happiness, but happiness itself, before it’s gone.

There are days when I experience several such moments, because happiness lies in the simple, everyday things that we often take for granted.

For several years I worked in an “office” which once used to be a garage. It was dark, with the windows painted shut and the walls painted a sickly shade of green. It was hot in summer, cold in winter and generally a depressing place to spend eight hours a day in. My workmate and I used to call it 'the cave' or sometimes 'the dungeon’. One day she had the brilliant idea of sticking a laminated piece of white paper on the door, and we used a black marker to make a list, accompanied by child-like drawings, of all the things that made us happy. Whenever our gloomy surroundings started ‘getting’ to us, we would look at our list and remember the many wonderful things we had in our lives, and we always ended up with a smile on our faces, which in turn made the room brighter.

The items contained in the list were amazing in their simplicity: Family, the kindness of strangers, sunrises, sunsets, rainbows, sunny winter days, chocolate, themed birthday parties, writing, air drumming, dancing, singing, holidays, bush walking, gardening…

Some people - as Hector finds out - see happiness as permanently in the future; a goal to constantly strive for, which is by default unattainable. Others, like Clarissa Vaughan, feel that their happiness belongs in the past. When Clarissa tells her daughter that the last time she felt genuinely happy was decades ago, her daughter replies ‘what you are saying, is that you were once young.’ I was once young too, and know what it is like to experience that kind of earth shattering happiness. When I was eighteen and in love for the first time, this is what I wrote about it:

I am so happy that I even feel angry; I am so happy that I feel like crying out aloud, that my lungs feel like bursting out like a balloon, so happy that I feel impotent at the sight of so much beauty, the nightfall of December, the Christmas lights at the windows, and the music - the ever blessed music - so happy, that I feel dumb in the presence of so much life, that the singing of the birds amongst the leaves is deafening, as deafening as the protest of those who cannot feel this madness.

… and so it went for two whole pages. But was this really happiness? Or was it euphoria? We all know what it is like to be 'high'; some people take drugs, others take extreme risks in order to experience that euphoria. I have been high in love, high in lust and even high in anger many a time. But is that happiness?

This morning, I woke up with a spring in my step, with that subtle yet exciting feeling of having butterflies in my stomach, for no particular reason. Yes, I had a good night sleep, and it was a beautiful day. But was that enough reason to be happy? I hadn't achieved or acquired anything overnight; nothing was different from yesterday. I decided not to question it. I held onto that feeling and managed to get to the end of the day with ‘it’ still inside me, despite a couple of incidents which generally would have been enough to make my mood plummet. 

When all is said and done, if we can look back and remember the hours spent enjoying a good book, writing a poem, or gardening with the sun on our backs; and the times of laughter, of joy and even of tears shared with lovers, family and friends, then we can say we have lived a life filled with happiness.

Recently a friend invited me to her grandson’s christening. It had been a long time since I attended a mass, and I found the sermon extremely stimulating, although not necessarily from a faith perspective. The priest started by showing the infamous ‘selfie’ that President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Denmark’s Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt took of themselves at Nelson Mandela’s Memorial service (photo credit: AFP PHOTO / ROBERTO SCHMIDT/Getty Images). Even on that solemn occasion, they couldn’t help themselves and succumbed to the temptation of taking a selfie. And they were caught in the act, by another camera!

The priest then showed a ‘selfie’ he took of himself at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. He said that the ‘selfie’ is our modern way of showing the world that “I was there”, with that famous person, or at that famous place, and I have the photo to prove it. It is our way of ‘witnessing’ events, landmarks, encounters, and, more often than not, trivial moments in our lives.

Before the invention of cameras, and more recently, digital cameras, people documented their encounters, travels and experiences by writing them down. The priest referred to the gospels, particularly the gospels written by John and Matthew, who were two of the twelve apostles*, and as such witnessed first-hand the life and deeds of Jesus, the most famous and enduring ‘celebrity’ of all. The gospel writers couldn’t take ‘selfies’ of themselves with Christ, so they wrote everything they saw to document it, and their stories spread like lightening – or in modern terms, they went ‘viral’.

Nowadays, with everybody carrying a camera in their pocket, selfies and photographs documenting our lives minute by minute are overloading the media landscape. Facebook posts that don’t include a picture, don’t receive as many ‘likes’. Images are much more likely to be re-twitted than plain text. Media releases with photographs have a much higher chance of being published. We live in a visual era, and words without pictures are often overlooked. People take thousands of photographs of their every trip or special occasion, but how often do they look at, or even download those pictures?

When I travelled to Europe in 2003 – still in my 'pre-digital' age – I took a grand total of 144 photographs: six rolls of 24. Nowadays that is a laughable quantity for a three-week tour, but when I returned home and developed the rolls I could hardly remember what photo was taken where. Fortunately, I had taken a comprehensive travel diary as well, describing the places, their history, the people I met at every stop, and other interesting facts. I was able to marry the words and the pictures and the resulting illustrated story was much more detailed and effective in conveying my adventures than the digital photo albums I produce these days, which have a one-line caption per photo and sometimes not even that.

A few months ago I was driving back home after work and I witnessed the most incredible rainbow. I thought of taking a photo, but my phone was in my bag and thankfully for the other motorists, I am not very good at multitasking when driving. I felt frustrated at first, but then realised that sometimes we miss the moment by trying to capture it with a camera. I captured it with my eyes, committed it to my memory, and that was enough.

I still remember the highlight of my first trip to Adelaide, South Australia, in 2001. In my diary, I recorded Womadelaide (the music festival at the botanical gardens) as one of the highlights; also the day tour to Hahndorf and Victor Harbour, and a cruise down the Murray River. But the biggest highlight of that trip didn't cost a cent: it was the sunset over West Beach on the night of our arrival. It was a hot afternoon and we walked to the beach to cool down. While we were there, the cloudy sky turned into an incredible canvas with a mixture of colours, textures and shapes in constant motion. The sea became a liquid mirror of the sky, reflecting the silver, blue and pink hues of the clouds, and the effect of the sun setting over the water was nothing short of miraculous. People quickly began to arrive, sensing that something momentous was taking place; some of them were even carrying champagne bottles and glasses. We all stood there, in awe, clinking glasses and taking in the landscape with jaws dropped. I cursed myself for not having my camera with me (pre-digital / smart phone era), but then again, a photo would have never paid this moment justice, so I wrote it all down as soon as we returned to our hotel. We went back to the beach at the same time the next day hoping to repeat the experience, with some friends who joined us in the morning, but unfortunately for them the sunset was nothing more than ordinary.

Thirteen years later, I don’t remember much about the Hahndorf and Victor Habour excursions or the cruise on the Murray, even though I took copious pictures of those places. But when I read my travel diary, I can instantly recall that sunset, which remains in my mind as one of the most spectacular I have ever seen.

To be able to conjure a visual image like that, after all these years, by painting it with words, demonstrates – to me – the supremacy of words against pictures. It might take an hour to write a thousand words (as it did to write this 1000-word blog post), and less than a second to take a picture, but it is time well spent.

* Mark and Luke, who wrote the other two gospels, were not part of the twelve apostles – in fact Luke joined the Christian movement after Jesus died; but they researched their stories by interviewing sources who had met and been close to their subject.

Why do we write?
Because we have stories to tell, messages to communicate, lessons to impart to others?
Because we ‘hear voices’?  (As in the voices of characters who are trying to get out of our heads and into the world)
Because it’s therapeutic, soothing and fulfilling; a way of working things out, of giving shape to our thoughts, our fears and our dreams?
For me, it’s all of the above, and more.

There are the trivial questions in life, and then there are the big questions.  
What is the meaning of life? What are we all here for? What will I leave to the world when I’m gone? Will there be a moment, however brief, when I will understand it all?