This brain constantly in conference with the racing heart, reminding me to slow down, stay calm.
I love this book and can’t wait to share it with my friends." But if you don’t recognize yourself in some of the despair, self-flagellation, euphoria, pride, profound love, and profound self-doubt, then it’s time for some introspection. Bassey is the canary in the mine: what we may sense as a one or two on the Richter scale, she registers as a 10. This is a book about the human condition and how hard it is to live in this broken world in these frail bodies. But to present it as only a book about mental illness is to sell it short. This is not a trite book about victory over mental illness, excepting the fact that she is still with us she is clear that every day is a struggle. This book is ostensibly about mental health, and it is that: We follow her from the early signs that no one recognized, through the crisis and out to the other side. There are lines that will make you laugh out loud (“I still hate yoga, it’s like a game of Simon Says that no one ever wins”) and descriptions so evocative they make you freeze: a sweater is burgundy, “the color of Anne’s raspberry cordial,” and that one line captures a type of girl that, if you were also one, identifies a kindred spirit. “This is a searing, lyrical piece of work: Bassey Ikpi started her career as a poet, and it shows as she finds music in heartbreaking moments.
Viscerally raw and honest, the result is an exploration of the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of who we are-and the ways, as honest as we try to be, each of these stories can also be a lie. But something wasn’t right-beneath the façade of the confident performer, Bassey’s mental health was in a precipitous decline, culminating in a breakdown that resulted in hospitalization and a diagnosis of Bipolar II.ĭetermined to learn from her experiences-and share them with others-Bassey became a mental health advocate and has spent the fourteen years since her diagnosis examining the ways mental health is inextricably intertwined with every facet of ourselves and our lives. Her early years in America would come to be defined by tension: an assimilation further complicated by bipolar II and anxiety that would go undiagnosed for decades.īy the time she was in her early twenties, Bassey was a spoken word artist and traveling with HBO's Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam, channeling her experiences into art. Four years later, she and her mother joined her father in Stillwater, Oklahoma -a move that would be anxiety ridden for any child, but especially for Bassey. A deeply personal collection of essays exploring Nigerian-American author Bassey Ikpi’s experiences navigating Bipolar II and anxiety throughout the course of her life.īassey Ikpi was born in Nigeria in 1976.
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