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This wasn’t paranoia. It was self-preservation.
There’s no pride in being a mental patient.
Silence and humiliation rule our playing fields.
large number of us seek solace in words, art and music.
it’s simpler still, for my bipolarity is more than a chronic clinical condition. It’s a corollary of birth. A wide variety and combination of variables are responsible for my condition, but genes, history, a dysfunctional gut and perpetual displacement carry by far the most consequence.
“Hi, I’m Melody,”
want to believe all the ‘chemical imbalance’ shit, but none of the meds have worked for me. If anything, they’ve made things worse.
He truly believes that every problem has a solution,
he adores charts and graphs and he’s always hunting for patterns.
I cried for the first time in weeks. The deeper I fall into Level 3, the harder it becomes to cry—activating
I’d done more than let him down. I’d wounded him.
Seeing how much made me think he truly might be better off without me.
This is so fucking embarrassing! I feel like such a failure.
named this elephant “ELLIE”— which stands for Every Lesson Learned Is Essential.
There is something to be learned from every life experience— positive or negative. Ellie’s presence reminds us of this each day.
Jesus, Melody, no one’s mad. We just want you to get better.”
The whole thing was like a wake-up call, and I’m waking up.”
me in North Carolina,
No matter how smart you are, freedom is never guaranteed.
fighting the stigma associated with mental illness by “coming out” publicly
Focusing on guiding my fellow inmates (however misguidedly) made me happy.
bipolar disorder is the sixth leading cause of disability in the world.
ever confident that if I could help them, I could help myself.
highly doubt I actually helped any of them recover, the simple act of trying to do so made a huge difference for me.
It gave me purpose and hope, however...
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haleem (a mixture of barley, wheat, onions, sugar, lamb, butter and
kalleh pacheh (a soup containing an entire lamb’s head, including the tongue, brain, and eyes, feet and
No doubt much of our empathy comes from a shared respect for suffering.
certain emotional and/or physical traumas trigger our minds to revolt in the most pesky and peculiar ways.
Their horror stories did more than remind me to count my blessings.
now that I knew I wasn’t alone, I had a reason to tread water.
I took up running in an attempt to outrun my mind, to prevent it from completely betraying and devouring me.
when my body was moving, my thoughts slowed down.
Assuming I was having a panic attack, Rox walked me to the bathroom and grabbed a Klonopin out of the medicine cabinet.
Melody Moezzi
eschewing the possibility of the impossible and making it hard as hell to believe that I’m even slightly damaged.
For whatever reason, sometimes I simply need to abandon reason for the sake of mere self-preservation.
Divine force that both informs and exceeds human understanding.
this love for knowledge, has time and time again introduced me to and rescued me from madness. I refuse to give it up.
There isn’t much room or respect for intellectual curiosity for its own sake. That’s the domain of “hobbies”—not formal schooling.
From my experience, I’ve found that the best way to “find yourself” is to find people who have less than you and help them—not
Something about never being alone when you’re enamored with God.
being in love—not only with God, but with all of His creation.
God is more than some distant, removed “Almighty.” He is as the poets and mystics refer to him: the Lover and the Beloved.
“Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park,”
House of Mystery (Montana’s only “natural vortex”).
That’s what mania is all about. Too much. Of everything.
on the land the Blackfeet call the Backbone of the World, where the sky refuses to contain itself and the glaciers struggle to survive humanity’s greed—where
God cannot be found, only sought.
to unite with the Beloved.
