Please forgive me if this makes no sense. There's not a living soul other than myself and God who knows this whole story, and it's a difficult one to get through.
I'd also like to request before I start that I am *not* treated as a victim. That's not the point of the story, nor is it to condemn the people involved; it's to show how faithful God is in these situations... please stick with it till the end!
I was born and raised with mental illness. Both my parents had it; my mother was prone to bursts of uncontrollable anger and had a seemingly endless capacity for criticism, and my father was depressed and would launch into sulks that lasted days. They fight like cats and dogs. Neither has at any point in my life made me feel loved or appreciated. In fact, I'm terrified of them, and this house is my least favourite place in the whole world, because you never know when it will become scary and painful.
There was pretty much no chance of my escaping it, and I was less than 10 when I first exhibited my own mental illness. I was fine most of the time, until I had my 'off days' - either I'd find the world a terribly sad place without a real reason, or would explode and inflict violence on whoever happened to be in the way. I was classed as a 'problem child', and it was quite obvious that teachers were afraid of me, but nobody ever tried to actually *help*; they just tried to manage me.
I was misdiagnosed with ADD by the school consellor, and she arranged to have the class to herself so that she could talk with them about what to do when I 'went mental'. This involved having a boy impersonate me so they could roleplay, it sounded TERRIBLY flattering. To get me out of the class, they got the teacher I loved to lie to me and set me some totally bogus assignment in the library. Of course, eleven year old kids are rather poor liars and I instantly found out - it was wonderful to know that I was officially a freak.
Some of the things my parents did while having episodes are so ridiculous I can scarcely believe them as I type them. Not once, but *a dozen or so times*, my mother ran away from the house in a fit of rage. What she was doing was cooling down for a couple of hours; but she never TOLD us that. She said she was leaving, forever, and you know what my father would say? 'She had to go because of you.'. They have always blamed me for their problems.
Even today, though I'm 18 and have been a karate state champion, they try to hit me. It's more pathetic than anything else, it certainly doesn't hurt... but it's terrifying to see them lose it like that and know that they have so much contempt for me.
And the criticism - I'm never going to forget the day I brought home my senior report card. I'm a *genius*. I was utterly topping Biology and Geography because my papers were pretty much perfect (and I was writing them in a day). Any parent in their right mind would at least be mildly appreciative of that. But you see, that semester in English we hit my greatest weakness - formal writing. My terrible result... a C. Which was about the third best result in the class.
I can't repeat what they said to me that night in this forum. They called it disgusting and me lazy, with an unimaginable amount of expletives added. They took me to the parent/teacher interview and demanding to know what I was doing wrong, and spent a good week making it clear I was a failure as a son. Not one thing was said about my A's.
But enough of my background. I could write a year's worth of Neighbours and still not run out of material from my own life... flash forward to 2001. I'm fifteen years old, and my self-esteem couldn't be more messed up. The local church has just started a youth group, and I'm invited. With little better to do, I go along on the beach trip to Gladstone...
During what for everybody else was a fun-filled afternoon, I was depressed. Nobody was particularly paying attention to me, and I got the idea that nobody would notice if I dissapeared. So I decided to make it happen. Without really thinking about it, I turned away from the shore, and started to swim.
By the time they came after me, I was something like a hundred metres out. I had no intention of stopping. But nobody ever said anything about it...
The next trip was to a youth rally in Gladstone. The band, Port City, played a bunch of Christian music including 'Every Day', which is now my favourite song in the world, and the preacher talked on how Satan wanted us all dead, and how Jesus sets us free. I felt... terrified. I realised for the first time just how bad my life had gotten - before, I'd never known anything else.
So I went up at the altar call, got down on my knees, and prayed as led by the preacher. What happened next freaked everybody - I started trembling, my entire body spasming, and I begged the Lord for forgiveness, pouring my heart out before Him. I lost all sense of the world around me and I could just feel Him, and I knew I had to get right with Him.
I'd like to say this is the point where the miracle turnaround happens. But it's not. This is where the battle really begins.
Now that I had a new life in Christ, something positive at last, the attacks came thicker and faster. My family situation disintegrated to the point where somebody would fight *absolutely every day*. My beliefs became more and more insane; I thought that I was, quite literally, the worst person in the world. I was convinced that absolutely *everybody* hated me, and with good reason. I was obsessed with thoughts of failure, even though I've actually never failed at anything intellectual in my entire life. If I did everything right, I'd simply ignore it, and if anything at all went wrong, I'd hate myself.
Now, there are many different names out there for this: some would call it a psychotic phenomenom, others demons, and there's all sorts of bizarre alternatives. Fact of the matter, I had voices in my head. The one I thought of as myself was rational and knew the truth (say, that I was actually doing very well at school)... but the other one *hated* me. It would abuse me constantly, filling my head with lies. I could not ignore it and became convinced of my own worthlessness and wretchedness. I started having compulsions; I would run away and find a place where I could be alone and obsess about the idea of my own death; often putting myself in direct danger by doing so (walking the city alone at 4am isn't recommended, nor is getting yourself lost in a desert, climbing seven stories of scaffolding or running down a mountain at midnight).
The battle between my depression and my spirituality was so nasty that it actually became painful to go to church. I eventually stopped because I couldn't sit through a worship service without hearing 'you don't deserve to be here, you're wretched in God's sight, you're worthless'.
For a year (from the end of high school to the start of university), I had a complete breakdown. I couldn't even cope with day to day life. My episodes became more and more frequent and varied; by the worst of it they came every three days and included elements of paranoia, schizophrenia, manic depressive, sleep and eating disorders, obsessive compulsive and self-abuse.
My parents offered absolutely no support, to this day they won't even admit I might have a problem. Mum told me I was 'faking it' when I was given extensions at school for my stress and threatened to expose my 'lies'. I only completed high school because of the intervention of my teachers, who basically forced me to do enough work to finish. In university no such support existed, so I did absolutely *nothing*, and thus got an average GPA of 4.8. By my standards, this is an absolute *crisis* result. I stopped doing absolutely everything I enjoyed - I *loved* my studies, going to church, music, writing, even just socialising, but I avoided absolutely all of them because I felt so bad.
And d'ya know, not one of my friends knew this was happening. I kept all of my problems a complete secret for three years. My entire walk with Christ was spent suffering in the dark.
That changed six months ago. See, God had planned for this. Without ever having any intention of doing so, I ended up in a university ministry called Student Life (I kid you not, the chain of events that led me there started with a Biology class in which I named my dissecting rat 'Eldric'...). Despite all my problems, I kept going, because I could see that these people had something special.
It was on a guy's retreat with this group that I was hit with the feeling that I couldn't keep this inside any longer. I knew I was going to explode and kill myself if I didn't, and some part of me still didn't want that to happen. That night we had a prayer session; five guys all shared their struggles quite honestly. I was last, and by the time it got to me I knew I couldn't lie.
I poured out my heart, and just told the smallest part of my story (that week alone was colourful enough). It only took a minute or so before I was shaking and ready to cry. The response was brilliant - everybody instantly offered their support and prayer, and I learned that all of them had in some way experienced depression in their own lives or those of someone close to them.
The very next morning I felt different. I felt the tiniest speck of hope.. and it was wonderful. Within a week I'd started profesional help and through my friends I quickly developed a wonderful support network. I tried every conceivable thing to try and make myself stable, and eventually I found something that worked - prayer.
I'm not taking any medication. I'm not seeing any professionals. I haven't even seen any of my friends since November due to circumstances beyond my control (I get back to uni in February, thank God!). But I've got God, and I talk to Him every single day.
My eyes have been opened. For the first time, I understand that God loves me. I can scarcely believe that I kept my faith for three entire years knowing how wonderful God was and how much I loved Him, and never believing for a second that He thought about me at all. But I don't have to any more; whenever I need to, I just meditate on Him and imagine His arms around me and I *know* that He is surrounding me with His love.
I can see that not every person has contempt for me either - some of my close friends have shown me real love through this trial and I treasure that. I've started to appreciate my achievements. I'm making commitments and sticking with them, next year I have some very exciting plans for my studies, my music and my ministry.
I won't claim to be a well man. But I've kept a tally of my episodes this year; I've had just five. That's only one every six days; my rate is dropping drastically. And each time I've known that God is there and He's helped reduce the severity.
Around three weeks ago now, just before starting the job that He provided (it truly blows my mind how many blessings he squeezed into this job, but that's another story), I couldn't stand my home any longer and hit the road out of town on my bike. I got about ten kilometres out, then felt the need to get off the road and sit down. I'd been ranting about how cruel my situation was and begging for death; and God spoke to me one simple thing: 'Do you want to die?'. It wasn't a question, it was an offer. A choice. And I knew He was going to honour my choice. But instantly I replied 'No, Lord. I want to do your will, and clearly that's to stay in this world and live for your glory.'
The result... I'll never, ever contemplate suicide again. I've a reason to live, and that's *exciting*.
Because of Him, I'm making a very real recovery from what I thought was an impossible trap. This is only the very beginning - I've a whole life of blessings ahead of me and an eternity with my father when this passes.
I hope that my story can encourage you. Know that God has a real and powerful love for *you*. Know that He can and will deliver you from whatever is keeping you from Him. Please don't suffer in silence. Whatever plagues you, take it up with Him. He knows your heart already, and He wants you to trust Him. If any of you need someone to talk to, please pm me. I'm quite impossible to surprise...
If you feel a need to pray after reading this, please pray for my parents. Their illness may well be as great as mine, but the difference is, they don't know Christ. They're heavily in denial and right now they have no means of escape. I know that they need to take this up with the Lord, but they don't... their stubborn hearts need to be changed.
Thank you for taking the (rather long!) time to read my story...
Your brother in Christ,
Andrew
I'd also like to request before I start that I am *not* treated as a victim. That's not the point of the story, nor is it to condemn the people involved; it's to show how faithful God is in these situations... please stick with it till the end!
I was born and raised with mental illness. Both my parents had it; my mother was prone to bursts of uncontrollable anger and had a seemingly endless capacity for criticism, and my father was depressed and would launch into sulks that lasted days. They fight like cats and dogs. Neither has at any point in my life made me feel loved or appreciated. In fact, I'm terrified of them, and this house is my least favourite place in the whole world, because you never know when it will become scary and painful.
There was pretty much no chance of my escaping it, and I was less than 10 when I first exhibited my own mental illness. I was fine most of the time, until I had my 'off days' - either I'd find the world a terribly sad place without a real reason, or would explode and inflict violence on whoever happened to be in the way. I was classed as a 'problem child', and it was quite obvious that teachers were afraid of me, but nobody ever tried to actually *help*; they just tried to manage me.
I was misdiagnosed with ADD by the school consellor, and she arranged to have the class to herself so that she could talk with them about what to do when I 'went mental'. This involved having a boy impersonate me so they could roleplay, it sounded TERRIBLY flattering. To get me out of the class, they got the teacher I loved to lie to me and set me some totally bogus assignment in the library. Of course, eleven year old kids are rather poor liars and I instantly found out - it was wonderful to know that I was officially a freak.
Some of the things my parents did while having episodes are so ridiculous I can scarcely believe them as I type them. Not once, but *a dozen or so times*, my mother ran away from the house in a fit of rage. What she was doing was cooling down for a couple of hours; but she never TOLD us that. She said she was leaving, forever, and you know what my father would say? 'She had to go because of you.'. They have always blamed me for their problems.
Even today, though I'm 18 and have been a karate state champion, they try to hit me. It's more pathetic than anything else, it certainly doesn't hurt... but it's terrifying to see them lose it like that and know that they have so much contempt for me.
And the criticism - I'm never going to forget the day I brought home my senior report card. I'm a *genius*. I was utterly topping Biology and Geography because my papers were pretty much perfect (and I was writing them in a day). Any parent in their right mind would at least be mildly appreciative of that. But you see, that semester in English we hit my greatest weakness - formal writing. My terrible result... a C. Which was about the third best result in the class.
I can't repeat what they said to me that night in this forum. They called it disgusting and me lazy, with an unimaginable amount of expletives added. They took me to the parent/teacher interview and demanding to know what I was doing wrong, and spent a good week making it clear I was a failure as a son. Not one thing was said about my A's.
But enough of my background. I could write a year's worth of Neighbours and still not run out of material from my own life... flash forward to 2001. I'm fifteen years old, and my self-esteem couldn't be more messed up. The local church has just started a youth group, and I'm invited. With little better to do, I go along on the beach trip to Gladstone...
During what for everybody else was a fun-filled afternoon, I was depressed. Nobody was particularly paying attention to me, and I got the idea that nobody would notice if I dissapeared. So I decided to make it happen. Without really thinking about it, I turned away from the shore, and started to swim.
By the time they came after me, I was something like a hundred metres out. I had no intention of stopping. But nobody ever said anything about it...
The next trip was to a youth rally in Gladstone. The band, Port City, played a bunch of Christian music including 'Every Day', which is now my favourite song in the world, and the preacher talked on how Satan wanted us all dead, and how Jesus sets us free. I felt... terrified. I realised for the first time just how bad my life had gotten - before, I'd never known anything else.
So I went up at the altar call, got down on my knees, and prayed as led by the preacher. What happened next freaked everybody - I started trembling, my entire body spasming, and I begged the Lord for forgiveness, pouring my heart out before Him. I lost all sense of the world around me and I could just feel Him, and I knew I had to get right with Him.
I'd like to say this is the point where the miracle turnaround happens. But it's not. This is where the battle really begins.
Now that I had a new life in Christ, something positive at last, the attacks came thicker and faster. My family situation disintegrated to the point where somebody would fight *absolutely every day*. My beliefs became more and more insane; I thought that I was, quite literally, the worst person in the world. I was convinced that absolutely *everybody* hated me, and with good reason. I was obsessed with thoughts of failure, even though I've actually never failed at anything intellectual in my entire life. If I did everything right, I'd simply ignore it, and if anything at all went wrong, I'd hate myself.
Now, there are many different names out there for this: some would call it a psychotic phenomenom, others demons, and there's all sorts of bizarre alternatives. Fact of the matter, I had voices in my head. The one I thought of as myself was rational and knew the truth (say, that I was actually doing very well at school)... but the other one *hated* me. It would abuse me constantly, filling my head with lies. I could not ignore it and became convinced of my own worthlessness and wretchedness. I started having compulsions; I would run away and find a place where I could be alone and obsess about the idea of my own death; often putting myself in direct danger by doing so (walking the city alone at 4am isn't recommended, nor is getting yourself lost in a desert, climbing seven stories of scaffolding or running down a mountain at midnight).
The battle between my depression and my spirituality was so nasty that it actually became painful to go to church. I eventually stopped because I couldn't sit through a worship service without hearing 'you don't deserve to be here, you're wretched in God's sight, you're worthless'.
For a year (from the end of high school to the start of university), I had a complete breakdown. I couldn't even cope with day to day life. My episodes became more and more frequent and varied; by the worst of it they came every three days and included elements of paranoia, schizophrenia, manic depressive, sleep and eating disorders, obsessive compulsive and self-abuse.
My parents offered absolutely no support, to this day they won't even admit I might have a problem. Mum told me I was 'faking it' when I was given extensions at school for my stress and threatened to expose my 'lies'. I only completed high school because of the intervention of my teachers, who basically forced me to do enough work to finish. In university no such support existed, so I did absolutely *nothing*, and thus got an average GPA of 4.8. By my standards, this is an absolute *crisis* result. I stopped doing absolutely everything I enjoyed - I *loved* my studies, going to church, music, writing, even just socialising, but I avoided absolutely all of them because I felt so bad.
And d'ya know, not one of my friends knew this was happening. I kept all of my problems a complete secret for three years. My entire walk with Christ was spent suffering in the dark.
That changed six months ago. See, God had planned for this. Without ever having any intention of doing so, I ended up in a university ministry called Student Life (I kid you not, the chain of events that led me there started with a Biology class in which I named my dissecting rat 'Eldric'...). Despite all my problems, I kept going, because I could see that these people had something special.
It was on a guy's retreat with this group that I was hit with the feeling that I couldn't keep this inside any longer. I knew I was going to explode and kill myself if I didn't, and some part of me still didn't want that to happen. That night we had a prayer session; five guys all shared their struggles quite honestly. I was last, and by the time it got to me I knew I couldn't lie.
I poured out my heart, and just told the smallest part of my story (that week alone was colourful enough). It only took a minute or so before I was shaking and ready to cry. The response was brilliant - everybody instantly offered their support and prayer, and I learned that all of them had in some way experienced depression in their own lives or those of someone close to them.
The very next morning I felt different. I felt the tiniest speck of hope.. and it was wonderful. Within a week I'd started profesional help and through my friends I quickly developed a wonderful support network. I tried every conceivable thing to try and make myself stable, and eventually I found something that worked - prayer.
I'm not taking any medication. I'm not seeing any professionals. I haven't even seen any of my friends since November due to circumstances beyond my control (I get back to uni in February, thank God!). But I've got God, and I talk to Him every single day.
My eyes have been opened. For the first time, I understand that God loves me. I can scarcely believe that I kept my faith for three entire years knowing how wonderful God was and how much I loved Him, and never believing for a second that He thought about me at all. But I don't have to any more; whenever I need to, I just meditate on Him and imagine His arms around me and I *know* that He is surrounding me with His love.
I can see that not every person has contempt for me either - some of my close friends have shown me real love through this trial and I treasure that. I've started to appreciate my achievements. I'm making commitments and sticking with them, next year I have some very exciting plans for my studies, my music and my ministry.
I won't claim to be a well man. But I've kept a tally of my episodes this year; I've had just five. That's only one every six days; my rate is dropping drastically. And each time I've known that God is there and He's helped reduce the severity.
Around three weeks ago now, just before starting the job that He provided (it truly blows my mind how many blessings he squeezed into this job, but that's another story), I couldn't stand my home any longer and hit the road out of town on my bike. I got about ten kilometres out, then felt the need to get off the road and sit down. I'd been ranting about how cruel my situation was and begging for death; and God spoke to me one simple thing: 'Do you want to die?'. It wasn't a question, it was an offer. A choice. And I knew He was going to honour my choice. But instantly I replied 'No, Lord. I want to do your will, and clearly that's to stay in this world and live for your glory.'
The result... I'll never, ever contemplate suicide again. I've a reason to live, and that's *exciting*.
Because of Him, I'm making a very real recovery from what I thought was an impossible trap. This is only the very beginning - I've a whole life of blessings ahead of me and an eternity with my father when this passes.
I hope that my story can encourage you. Know that God has a real and powerful love for *you*. Know that He can and will deliver you from whatever is keeping you from Him. Please don't suffer in silence. Whatever plagues you, take it up with Him. He knows your heart already, and He wants you to trust Him. If any of you need someone to talk to, please pm me. I'm quite impossible to surprise...
If you feel a need to pray after reading this, please pray for my parents. Their illness may well be as great as mine, but the difference is, they don't know Christ. They're heavily in denial and right now they have no means of escape. I know that they need to take this up with the Lord, but they don't... their stubborn hearts need to be changed.
Thank you for taking the (rather long!) time to read my story...
Your brother in Christ,
Andrew
