Welcome to April Unscripted

April Unscripted – Issue #1 (December 2025)

Hello wonders,

Welcome to my monthly column – HURRAH!

If you don’t know me, my name is April Kelley, I’m a filmmaker who co-owns Mini Productions, I’m an ambassador for Bipolar UK and I’m bipolar (type 2).

Sidebar 1: I personally identify as “I am bipolar”, not “I have bipolar”. I’m aware I might be in the minority with that, but we can get into that in a future column.

I hope to bring you comfort and make you feel seen and heard.

If you do know me, and if you know my writing, you know you won’t be getting an expert’s opinion – I’m legally obligated to say I am not a doctor. What you’ll be getting is candid, raw and honest thoughts and stories about living with bipolar… with some self-deprecation mixed in for good measure.

I’ll be popping up every month, with the hope to bring you comfort and make you feel seen and heard. I’m going to do my best to not offend anyone, but this is my truth. Bipolar sucks, it suckssss – and we’re going to scream into the void, together.

Sidebar 2: don’t ever, ever let anyone tell you your feelings are normal, because although they sound like universal feelings, they’re not for us. We feel every standard, basic, common feeling on an astronomical level, that’s what can make bipolar life-threatening, at times, in my humble opinion.

However, I also wholeheartedly believe bipolar has been the catalyst to many of my successes, so together we’re going to explore how we can make the best of this crappy hand we’ve been dealt.

Okay, I’ll break the ice by sharing 10 facts.

10 facts about me and my life with bipolar:

1. I’ve struggled with my mental health since I was 15, when I attempted to take my own life.
2. It took me until I was 27 to get a diagnosis… 12 YEARS! 12 years of misdiagnoses and inappropriate medication, resulting in a multitude of things which I’ll get into but, most painfully, I lost my late teens and early twenties. Some of you might be thinking, “Surely that’s not the most painful thing that happened”… and you’d be right! But I’ve been paying the price of losing those formative years…
3. I’ve made many a mistake when I’ve been high (we’ll get into it).
4. I’ve had severe memory loss when I’ve been low (we’ll get into it, or at least try lol).
5. I’m on a concoction of three different types of medication to keep me balanced on that pesky tightrope; one keeps my mood stable, one makes me sleep (otherwise I don’t), and one quietens the voices in my head.
6. I take seven pills everyday. That’s 2,555 pills in a year, and I can’t bear to think what the hell those are doing to my innards.
7. Yes, I still drink even on all those pills.
8. I wake up every morning thinking, “Goddammit, I’ve gotta do this all again?!?!”
9. My biggest fear (besides birds), is that I’m hard work, and I don’t want to be hard work.
10. Bonus facts; I’m bisexual (making me bi squared), I’m a libra, I split my time between London and LA, and I foster kittens – which gives me reason to haul my butt out of bed each morning.

Everything I do for the charity, and the reason why I write is for my 15-year-old self.

I won’t lie, I stumbled upon Bipolar UK during one of my many sleepless manic nights, frantically Googling, searching, hoping to find the answers and a cure, but settling for reading others’ stories and thinking, “At least I’m not alone”.

Everything I do for the charity, and the reason why I write is for my 15-year-old self. I never want anyone to feel as scared and as lonely as she did, so if you’ve stumbled across this, welcome! This is officially a safe space for you to revisit – I gotchu!

Bipolar UK has given me a community – let’s continue to build on it! If you have any topics you’d like me to cover, feel free to hit me up on Instagram: @april__kelley.

If you haven’t watched it already, please do watch mine and Rosie Viva’s film for the charity’s new campaign Maybe it’s bipolar?. If you think you or a loved one may be affected by bipolar, take the test.

For this month, I’ll leave you with something I share all too often (and will continue to do so)... When I finally received my diagnosis, I decided to tell my Dad via text (unhinged). 

When he replied, before anything else, he said, “I always knew there was a spark of genius in you”. I believe that to be true of anyone, anyone living with bipolar and I hope as the months go on, you’ll believe it within yourself or see it in your loved one.

I wish you all a very happy, safe and stable festive season. It can be a triggering time of year for us, please keep an eye on your sleep patterns.

I’ll see you in 2026 babyyyyy!

Lots of love,

April x

PS. See Bipolar UK, I knew I could finish this without swearing!