The Power of a Bipolar Mage

Written by Maij Vu Mai, April 10, 2023

***Author’s note- the following blogpost was created and shared in a series of IG posts and stories, in honor of Bipolar Awareness Day on March 30, 2023.

I first came into awareness of my bipolar landscape in 2017, after connecting with a friend who also lives with bipolar. At the time, I was desperately clinging onto a shell of myself that I had created, in order to survive the world- composed and calm on the outside, utter chaos and shambles on the inside. I didn’t understand why I was so emotional all the time. Yea, I have Cancer Sun and Mercury placements, so one could say that I’m an emotional being, period. And yet- the drastic degrees to which my mood would change and flip, the constant imbalance that I felt on the inside was devastating and would show up in painful, unmanageable ways.

For a really long time, I just thought I was broken, that something was inherently wrong with me, and that I would never find peace in my life, body, and spirit. What made me feel even more unstable is that when I would share these feelings with folks, I never felt like any of it was real because nobody believed me. Or if they did/even if they did, I would tell myself that they couldn’t believe or understand me, even if they tried.

Enter the fall of 2017, where I had my first conversation with a friend who also lived with bipolar disorder and was kind and gentle enough to openly share their experiences with me. That first conversation felt like a portal opening, a rite of passage, a sacred initiation into the truest parts of myself- the parts of myself that were screaming to be seen as emotionally distraught even though I appeared mentally stable on the outside. “High functioning” is one way of phrasing this incongruent phenomenon of experience. I resonate with the term masking now a days.

It was like being a turbulent whirlpool and being called a still pond. An ocean of emotions but contained to the smallest glass cup.

After 8 months of working with a Black woman therapist to better explore, understand, and familiarize myself with my mood patterns- I finally decided to go see a psychiatrist at my university to explore medication as a viable option for managing my mood swings. On that very first appointment, I was misgendered and misnamed, even though my therapist had meticulously written notes on how I like to be honored and referred to in her referral to the office. Barely 2 minutes into the appointment, without even getting to know me or my experience, I was told by a white woman “So yea, looking at your notes, you don’t have bipolar. Bipolar looks like [insert a stereotypical, limited, unnuanced view/framing of bipolar that only makes sense to white people/bodies].

“Who tf are you, to tell me what my emotional landscape is and isn’t?” I thought to myself. “Who are you to determine the textures, sounds, and resonances of my experiences?”

6 years after that appointment, my neurospicy cauldron has explored (with the loving, tender support of Black women and queer therapists) OCD, PTSD, ADHD, and Bipolar Disorder as all possible material for the realities that I swim in, each and everyday. Can diagnoses from help people identity care structures, medicine rituals, and community infrastructures in this terribly f*cked up world? Absolutely.

AND ALSO- as a DRAMATIC MaGe who refuses to be crunched by other people’s fantasies of me and eaten alive,” I choose to “define myself for myself” in a world that would love to define me for me (Audre Lorde).

I’m an artist, baby. Give me paint, and I’ma make art.

The language that I use for the Majestic Method developed out of a personal need to find language that encapsulated the tulmutuous highs, lows, and evertything in between that comes with being a bipolar person.

What does it feel like to experience Heaven and Hell in one body?

To experience euphoria in one moment and devastation in the next?

To live in an body that changes its emotional, social, and mental temperature frequently in a world where stability is already scarce and hard to find?

Build a rich inner world allows me to witness my fluctuating body, my bipolar ecosystem, my ever changing home container in a way that says “wow, there’s so much rich texture there.”

Cultivating a responsive ecosystem allows me to gather all the knowledge, signs, omens, and voices adn create new constellations and webs that help me love the way I look at the world.

Embracing my embodied alchemy allows me to embrace the temperture play of my mood swings and manipulate that materials like elemental magick. I am a mood bender, an emotional alchemist, a magi who experiences and explores their body wisdom and shares that wisdom with others.

To all my bipolar siblings- I see you, I hold you, I embrace you, and I bless you in the name of the ultimate tide bender- the Moon.

And may the tides of your emotional landscape be ever in your favor.