For a long time my flights of imagination, my writer's highs, my days on end of complete focus and engagement, were a gift and a mystery. I didn't know what to think of them except that I must be a gifted and talented writer. Talented...well....everyone told me I was, from a very early age. Gifted...because what seemed so hard for some other writers came so easily to me, and that must be a gift, right?
But my intense creativity, productivity, and focus take on a new and sinister light in the wake of my diagnosis. I know now that the exceptional clarity, the instant connections, the way I could hold a huge novel in my head...the way I could focus for days at a time with little need for sleep....those things that were the hallmarks of the way I worked...are actually symptoms of my illness.
It's not a mystery. It's not a divine gift. It's not magic.
It's hypomania. It's bipolar. It's an illness.
Damnit.
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