At 33, bipolar disorder cost me everything. Here’s what rebuilding looks like

endure twelvemonth, on queen victoria daylight, I strike send on my resignation letter.

I’d spent the long weekend drafting the letter to resign from a job I loved but had become convinced was wrong. By Monday, it felt less like quitting and more like an act of public service.

What I didn’t know at the time was that something was brewing inside me. I would later understand that I had bipolar I, a serious mental illness marked by extreme mood swings ― from the highs of mania to the lows of depression ― and, in my case, with psychotic features.

For me, mania felt like acceleration. Thoughts linking at high speed. Everything becoming inevitable. I paced through the night writing essays about politics, morality and national integrity.

I became convinced I had found a fracture inside the organization where I worked as a senior policy analyst. There was only one truth, and I believed I was the only one seeing it. Everyone else was distorting it. I wrote as if I’d been appointed to defend reality itself. When I reread the letter, I felt proud. When I pressed send, I felt righteous.

I imagined its impact going far beyond the borders of my workplace with ministers being briefed. My letter would be cited in Parliament. I posted it publicly on my website and circulated it widely to friends, colleagues and bosses.

Then I refreshed the news. Nothing happened.

At home, things began to unravel as the mania intensified. Sleep disappeared. Routines collapsed. People around me began to worry.

The consequences spread across my life. After a psychotic break from reality, parenting time with my two children became restricted and narrowed to supervised visits.

I told myself it was procedural. Temporary. In reality, lawyers were already discussing my parenting arrangements. While I argued grand theories about national sovereignty, others managed the fallout.

My fiancé tried to slow me down. Sleep. See a doctor. Pause. I mistook love for obstruction. The relationship ended. The wedding never happened.

Friends went quiet. Group chats stopped. Some messages were forwarded to clinicians and lawyers.

I called it betrayal. It was fear of who I had become and what might happen next.

Three days after I sent the letter, police came to my door and brought me to a psychiatric unit. It was my fourth involuntary hospitalization in four months.

I wasn’t frightened. I was irritated.

I still believed history was moving in my direction. I wasn’t reckless with my career and life; I thought I was acting for the greater good.

One evening, as he did every night, my father was visiting me in hospital. I told him the King of England was in town because of my resignation letter.

It felt obvious to me: we had met the man during a visit to Ottawa years earlier and my letter clearly had geopolitical implications. When my father said he didn’t believe it, I yelled at him to leave. He left quietly.

In my medical chart, doctors started using terms like "grandiosity," "delusional thinking" and "poor insight."

Over the next six weeks, the mania thinned. Medication dulled its edges. The theories collapsed. Parliament never debated my letter. No minister called. The world moved on from the letter I thought would change everything.

Weeks later, rereading that letter, I began to consider I might have been wrong.

That realization didn’t feel like insight. It felt like humiliation. The sentences were absolute. Final. Certain in a way that now felt terrifying.

I felt exposed.

But beneath that was grief.

During the episode, the mania had felt like a gift: articulate, driven, fearless. Now I could see it had been lying. I missed it anyway.

Six weeks after my final hospital admission, I was discharged. Despite the paperwork having been processed, my employer rescinded my resignation, placed me on medical leave and required medical clearance before I could return.

My bosses didn’t close the door to my career. But much of my life had to be rebuilt. My house was now empty. I brought in roommates. I began rebuilding my relationship with my children. Some friendships recovered. Others didn’t.

Months later, I returned to work part-time. Everything felt different. Files had moved. Deadlines passed. Decisions made. I wasn’t indispensable. But I wasn’t discarded.

For a while, I thought of the episode as something behind me: an eruption, a hospitalization, a mess to clean up. But bipolar disorder doesn't fit that kind of neat narrative. Recovery means accepting that the risk of mania never simply disappears.

The most unsettling moment came when I reread the letter again four months later. It didn’t read like a breakdown. It read like a manifesto: structured, coherent, persuasive.

It was then I understood a manic episode could happen again. I could write something just as certain, just as wrong, and not know until the damage was done.

The country didn’t need saving. I did.

Now I draft emails again and reread them twice before sending them. I shorten my arguments. I choose my words carefully. And before pressing send, I ask the question I never asked that weekend: What if I’m wrong?

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Freelance contributor

Miguel Pommainville-Cléroux is an Ottawa-based policy analyst and father. He lives with late-onset bipolar disorder and writes about recovery, mental illness, work and identity.

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