In this story, I want to share how bipolar affected my ten-year career as a chef and the way I viewed myself.

I had a place in NUS after National Service but wasn’t interested in the course offered to me. I didn’t want my university studies to lead to a career I didn’t care for.

A few weeks before I ORDed, a friend suggested that, since I enjoy eating, I consider going to SHATEC to study culinary arts. That was when a lightbulb flipped on and I was super excited at this possible route of study.

I enjoyed my time at SHATEC, particularly Event Catering, where we created new menu items for the paying public. One of my contributions to the menu was the main course of the salmon dish. The skin of the salmon was scored and then filled with sage and pan fried to crispy perfection. It was paired with a ponzu sauce, a citrus-based sauce with salty, tangy and savoury notes. I spent a lot of time and effort getting the sauce right, and was praised by a visiting Japanese chef.

Immersing myself in professional kitchens upon graduation exhilarated me, but dark clouds began to form. Although I couldn’t articulate what the distressing signals from my mind and body were telling me, I intuitively sensed that it was getting harder to keep up with my chefs’ expectations and the expectations I had of myself.

For many years, I went to work feeling a tight knot in my stomach. My body would be tense and my breathing shallow. I didn’t have a name for these sensations then, but I now know they represent anxiety. I’m a perfectionist, and also highly perceptive of my surroundings. I was able to see problems before they materialized, which in turn put me in a constantly hypervigilant state to course correct. This, coupled with my perfectionist nature placed a great deal of stress on me.

Over time, I found myself having a drink before work and even during work to calm my nerves. I was young and ignorant of better ways of taking care of myself. Alcohol was accessible and socially acceptable in my circles. It was fast acting and seemed to help with stress…until it didn’t. Struggling with sleep deprivation, I experienced moments of brilliance and creativity when I would come up with dishes that I would convince my chefs to put up as specials for testing and feedback before they made it onto the main menu. I also experienced increasingly longer periods when I was catatonically depressed and in despair.

Every possible mistake seemed like a cataclysmic event. I would escape into the toilet and lock myself in to get a grip on myself. 

 A major turning point came when I was offered work in a restaurant ranked first in Asia in the Miele Guide and 27th on the S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best list. This was the job of my dreams. I put on a brave and happy façade, but my anxiety undermined me. I found communication with other staff difficult, and I couldn’t focus or sequence tasks. I summoned up the courage to tell my chef of my struggles, and he offered me a less taxing role that didn’t involve cooking. Even then, I felt I wasn’t up to the task and asked to leave.

I then pivoted to being a private chef for the next five years up until the time I migrated to Melbourne. This new role allowed me to continue being a chef while allowing me to take better care of myself by pacing myself better and not overcommitting.

Despite enjoying success as a private chef, even gaining recognition as second runner up in a Mediacorp cooking competition, I still felt like a failure deep down in not being able to work in professional kitchens as I used to. For years, I couldn’t watch programmes that featured chefs and cooking because they reminded me of my failure and the crumbling identity I’d attached so much of my worth to.

Yet migrating to Melbourne didn’t let me escape bipolar. I lost three more great jobs as a result of being sick.  The first was my first ever appointment as head chef of a cafe in the Australian city. I had to leave after a month.  The second was a great job I enjoyed as a horticulturalist for five years, also in Melbourne, and the last spanned just over four months  as a financial services consultant when I relocated to Singapore. Losing these three great job opportunities crushed my spirit and made me wonder if I’d ever be able to sustain a job for any length of time without succumbing to depression.

It’s been 15 years since I left that top restaurant back in 2011. Grieving these losses in my professional life is a process I’ve followed through the many different seasons of my life since.

Yet the loss of my ability to work in professional kitchens while painful, has opened new career opportunities that I never imagined, which have moulded me into the person I am today.

Accepting that high stress jobs with long hours are a major trigger for my episodes allowed me to explore other jobs that enabled me to take better care of myself. I structure my day carefully now, journal to pen my thoughts and feelings, and monitor my daily mood. I am kinder to myself, have a deep sense of gratitude, and I ask for help when I need it.

Early on in my recovery and trying to understand my history with bipolar, I often wondered who the real Julius was. Was I hypomanic Julius, depressed Julius, or stable Julius? What  was my innate personality, and how did the sum of all these parts fit together to make me me? Now I realise that bipolar doesn’t change me as a person. In an acute episode, my values are amplified and distorted, but they don’t vanish.

It’s been a meandering path finding my current job as a biomedical technician which allows me to work at a sustainable pace while also being sufficiently mentally engaging.

I feel the pain of young people whose dreams such as having a successful career and a happy family with children dashed when they are diagnosed with cancer or a debilitating mental illness, and I share my experiences with them.

For a long time, I scoffed at people who made their job their sole identity. I forgot that was exactly what I did as a young person. I’ve changed now that I’m a 41-year-old botak uncle.

But I feel it’s important I don’t forget where I came from, for so I can connect to people who are in processing grief over identity loss, whatever they attach those identities to.

I know who I am today. I’m thinking of going back to uni, to study Sociology, exploring people, society, systems and institutions: something that I’ve subconsciously enjoyed doing over the years. I've rebuilt a new life around effective management of bipolar, strong interpersonal relationships, fulfilling work and deep fulfillment from mental health advocacy opportunities. But boy, oh boy, it’s taken a long time to perfect, just like that ponzu sauce I made all those years ago.

Julius is a biomedical technician with the same company for the past three years and counting: a huge personal achievement, he reckons.  He is a huge anime otaku, a umamusume fan, and loves reading novels and manga. When he is not aspiring to write his memoir , he is brought back to a rather simple yet profound aspiration -- to stay well so his loved ones can go about their day to day lives without worrying about him.

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Photo by Tsuyoshi Kozu at Unsplash