James Hanna-Magill

Dear Reader

I am 'bipolar' - what they used to call 'manic depressive'. It is simply a mood disorder where moods high or low are extreme versus the rest of the populace.

They can incapacitate or inspire. It is both a blessing and a curse.

But then so are / were reputedly: Stephen Fry (the English comic), Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain, Vincent Van Gogh, Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Winston Churchill, Napoleon Bonaparte, Jim Carey, Robin Williams, Adam Ant, Russell Brand, Kurt Cobain, Patricia Conwell, Richard Dreyfuss, Edward Elgar (the composer), Paul Gascoigne (the footballer), Mel Gibson, Graham Greene, Adolph Hitler (I know sorry), Spike Milligan (the comic), Marilyn Monroe, Edgar Allen Poe, Axl Rose, Frank Sinatra, Britney Spears, Catherine Zeta Jones.

Need I go on?

Under my name you will find a video with many identified as bipolar. Some you may never have heard of. Others you would be surprised to find on the list.

I am just one of the many nameless. Yet we all share a common trait.

To critique the video, it dwells much on the positive but shortcuts the negative attributes, some of which I have been experiencing in recent times, in my case severe depression.

Sadly some of the above committed or attempted suicide because they could not cope with a disorder granted at birth.

You should note that the novel 'Split' an early draft I have on here addresses in a novelistic fashion mental health disorders and seeks to destigmatise them. I have a chance of getting it published. Fingers crossed.

I have decided to come back to this site now though at times I still struggle.

But then, and it applies to many of us, if we carry mental health difficulties or other burdens of mood or circumstances, whatever they may be, perhaps at times the only way for us to best express ourselves is in writing.

The same may apply to happiness and ecstasy too.

Bipolar affective disorder above all but the human condition is just a mix of extreme conflicting moods.

This site I have always regarded as my writing home. Of the many writing sites available on the internet and I joined many, this I consider the best.

I have found this site to be the most mutually supportive of all I have encountered.

In 2013, when I was heavily engaged on this site, I believe I hit a record. There were three categories then. On one day I ended up being all at the same time 'Top Writer', 'Top Writer to Watch' and 'Top Reviewer'.

Those days are gone. But I wish to get involved again on this site as best I am able where the motto is 'mutual support and critique' so we may all write better and 'review to be reviewed'.

I write poetry and prose; happy and sad; meaningful and meaningless; humour and humourless; sane and absurd; clean and filthy; long and short. You name it I do it. I don't like definitions or boundaries. Do you?

Take this as it comes. I am no better or worse than you. We are all just part of the jumble we call humanity.

It surprises me and it might surprise you I actually have been published and paid for some of my writing. But then that only goes to show I am not the only fool on the planet!

Otherwise I think I am:

Affable, avid, analytical, aspiring...British, Belfast, Bipolar, bilingual...Cambridge, candid, constructive, courteous...discerning, daring, diplomatic, diffident...effusive, eager, earnest, enquiring...Francophile, friendly, fifty something, fevered...gracious, grateful, generous, glad...honourable, hectic, hopeful, honest...insightful, interested, insecure, Irish...jovial, jocular, jejune, joyful...kind, keen, knowing, kicking...listless, learning, loving, long-haul...male, measured, masking, mature...nurturing, natural, naive, neurotic...open, opaque, ordinary, optimistic...persevering, paralysed, parched, passing...questioning, quick, quiescent, quiet...ruminative, righteous, restive, reserved...sober, sane, sage, sincere...temperate, tortuous, teeming, torpid...uncommon, unbroken, untamed, uncertain...vacillating, vehement, versatile, virtuous...wag, wallowing, warm, welcoming...xenophile, xenophobiaphobic, xenotrusting, xeno myself...yearning, youthful, yellow, yes (to no) man...zealous, zany, zestful, zero.

They do say of course:

'There is the person you think you are; the person others think you are; and the person you really are'.

As philosophically little to nothing resides outside perception, that might imply there is a God who made us (a creator) as only he / she could possibly know who we really are.

Failing that, no-one ever can or will.