My reply to your PM:

I am thrown off whenever you refer to yourself as "bipolar". I have known manic-depressives, including women who become garrulous and hyperactive during the onset of their period. I have known melancholics, who are basically oversensitive people with a very low sense of self-esteem. I have known cynics, pessimists, skeptics, and the darkest of the dark. But I have yet to meet a real "bipolar".

Bipolarism--to me and to me alone, anyway--would have to be a syndrome that exists ONLY in countries that have severe winters, since it would afflict mainly people with inflexible cycladic rhythms.

It is difficult for me to conceive of bipolars in the Philippines, where we have only two seasons, where the sun is always shining, where even acquaintances are touchy-feely, where entertainment abounds at cheap prices, where there are too many restaurants and no one seems to go hungry despite poverty, where melodrama and hysterics are modes of expression even in politics, and where people like myself can walk the streets in outrageous costumes and no one bothers to take a second look.

Sometimes I feel that when a Filipino says that he/she is bipolar, he/she is merely being faddish, since it became pretentiously fashionable to be "bipolar" three years ago, or is merely using that as an excuse for shortcomings in his/her personality.

You may be moody, you may have the blues, you may be in a funk, you may have a bad-hair or bad-moustache day, you may have job dissatisfaction, you may have a dysfunctional family--but I would never call you "bipolar".

Here is the best advice I can give:

1) Learn how to relax.

2) Allow things to happen.

3) Know how to have fun.

I hope this is helpful to you.