Matt's Story
It is March 11, 2008. I find myself 36 years old and in the emergency room at Akron General Medical Center in Akron, Ohio. I had learned just a few days before that the problems I have had most of my life had a name. Bipolar disorder. This is a name I will never forget, and wish I never had to learn. I spent the next eleven days ramping up meds and trying to grapple with what this would mean for the rest of my life.
I did not know who I was anymore. How much of me was the disease? Am I even still in there? Did I even know who “I” was? None of the answers to these questions came easy. It was the beginning of a year I will never forget. I spent some of my time as an in-patient asking the others around me about their stories. What I heard broke my heart and filled me with fear. How can I not become this? How can I help them?
I remember one woman (we will call her Jody). Jody was lost. You could tell just by looking in her eyes. The burns on her fingers from drug use were apparent. She sat and stared. She did not talk to anyone, she never smiled. I sat down one day and asked if she would talk to me. The story she told changed my life. She was s
mart, very smart. She had multiple degrees, and knew multiple languages. Her family had tossed her out. They could not understand why she could not get it together. Jody had a son whom she would probably never see again. She had no hope. After we talked for awhile I asked her to play Yahtzee with me. You would have thought I had just asked her to go to the moon. We played for a couple of hours. It made her day and changed me in ways I would not know for months to come. She smiled. The image of her face will never leave me.
It was at this point that I asked God to allow me to help these people - some way, somehow. The very next day MoodyMinds was born.
After my discharge, my wife of 10 years left. She could not deal with this mountain of information. She had lived through years of life-halting depression and crazy hypo-manic times of racing thoughts. She had nowhere to turn. She did not have the tools to deal with this. She did not see any way that I could ever be better or fixed. I spent the next several months watching my life disappear. My health was gone. My wife was gone. My young children were with me part time at best. My house was gone. My car was gone. My company of ten years was gone. My income was gone. This all took place in about 10 months. To say it was rough is an understatement.
It is now May of 2010. MoodyMinds has grown and has a plan. The miracles of God have been abundant and amazing. Detail after detail was resolved with nearly no effort. One thing after another delivered in ways that I will not even attempt to explain.
All I know is that two years later, I am new. I still get sick sometimes. I still struggle with my own management. I still sit and stare some days, but I am new. I have a purpose. I have a joy that goes beyond understanding. Everything in my life has been placed there for this opportunity. My knowledge of technology, my public speaking engagements, my teaching experience, my business background, my ability to build partnerships with large corporations - simply everything.
I thank God every day for what I have gone through, for what I had to lose, for what I had to learn. It is all of these things that have the potential to change the lives of many people. It is my sole desire to help people, and it is with great joy that I consider all of these trials I have had to go through. Simply because I helped one young woman smile.