Well, I'll try. I can guarantee I won't be satisfied with my answer, and you probably won't be, either...
I was born into Roman Catholicism. My paternal grandfather was a deacon, and his wife, my grandma, attended mass daily, no matter what the weather. My grandpa taught me my first full sentence: "Praise the Lord!" Everyone who knew my grandma said she was a Saint (in the upper-case, Roman Catholic sense). Anyway, I went to CCD, received my first communion, and was confirmed. I had aspirations of becoming a priest and/or a monk when I was young. I used to set up a bunch of chairs with all of my stuffed animals, put on robes and read from my children's missal and pretend I was a priest.
I got older and was influenced by evangelical Christianity. Most of my friends in high school went to an evangelical youth group, which they invited me to attend. I had never studied the Bible much up until then. I read it, but I did not understand what I was reading. I received some explanations for some of my questions at this youth group. Even so, I held onto my Roman Catholic identity, often taking flak for wearing a crucifix instead of an empty cross. During my sophomore year of high school, I met my future wife at this youth group.
I became suicidally depressed. I was excelling in my advanced classes, was very athletic and had good friends and family, but the world turned into utter darkness for me. My friends tried to help me, but I got worse. My parents were utterly non-responsive. The youth pastor attempted to exorcise me after one evening of uncontrollable weeping, but it accomplished nothing. My faith in God waivered, but I held on.
I got to college and neglected the faith utterly. I partied. I drank. I got into literally Satanic music. I hated my studies, but I was too apathetic to do anything about it. I was still suicidally depressed, but it had become a fact of life, and I did not feel I could be helped. One night during my third year, I lost it while at work. I couldn't stop crying. I could not carry on, nor did I want to. For the first time in years, I prayed. I told God that I didn't know what to ask for, but I wanted to believe, I wanted to be a good person, I wanted my life to be worth something.
So I stopped drinking, stopped partying, started pouring myself into my studies and tried to pray and re-learn everything I thought I knew about the truth, which I thought had to be some form of Christianity. My search for the truth landed me in the Orthodox Church. I believed I had found home. My fiancee and I fought bitterly over the issue, as she was still very much evangelical, but eventually we both were brought into the church via chrismation (the Western equivalent would be confirmation, I suppose) during Great Lent 2008. My new Orthodox friends were wonderful. I thought God had shown me the way back. The depression went away.
I graduated college and got married. We leased a house together, and I once again contemplated the priesthood. I was already a chanter, I sang in the choir, and I had a rather popular blog. But things were falling apart. My parish priest requested to be transferred, and before I knew it, the parish I belonged to shattered. My friends were gone. I had a new priest who seemed to believe a different version of Orthodoxy than that which I had been taught. And my wife didn't like him at all. Nevertheless, we stuck it out.
The depression returned, worse than ever. I couldn't find a job. My wife and I struggled with our finances, even as our parish demanded a tithe. I talked to my priest about my mental health, and he recommended I see a therapist. So I did. He was so taken aback by my suicidal ideation that he sent me to an emergency clinic for antidepressants. This marked the official beginning of my struggle with my mental health.
The pills didn't help at all. In fact, I got worse. My first psychiatric hospitalization was in November of 2008, the same year I graduated college and got married and was received into Orthodoxy. My priest didn't visit me once, nor did he call. Same with the rest of my parish. When I was released and returned to church, nobody said a thing about it. I didn't particularly want to talk about it, anyway, but I felt isolated. And in December, I was admitted again. I brought in 2009 locked on a psych ward, denied my shoes, my belt, my crucifix, my watch, my phone, my laptop, everything. I spent all of my free time in the hospital begging God to help me.
After I was released, once again, nobody wanted to talk to me. Finally, while chanting vespers one March night, I couldn't deal with it anymore. I left in the middle of the service. I never returned. And when I arrived home, I lost it. I screamed at God, every obscenity I could think of, daring him to damn me. I no longer had my sanity, and once I finished screaming, I no longer had my God. I received no answer from him.
The years following are a blur. I tried to get a job as a pharmacy technician, but I couldn't because everything I learned during my training was erased after I was given electroconvulsive therapy. No combination of medications would help, and my doctors were desperate. So was I. I tried again to shift careers, this time into nursing. I landed a good job at Loyola University Medical Center, but I was too ill to handle it. I watched a man slowly die while under my care, and there was nothing I could do for him because he was a DNR. He screamed and writhed for hours, and nothing would calm him. Finally, he died, and I performed post-mortem care. Nobody had visited him the entire time he was hospitalized. This would be difficult for anybody to handle, but for someone who was now diagnosed with bipolar disorder, this was too much. I had to quit.
Fast forward a few years, and my illness got even worse. I attempted suicide in 2014, even while attempting to resume praying to God and going to a different church. At this point, I was hallucinating and delusional, and my diagnosis was changed again to schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. To this day, I am taking a myriad of antidepressants, antipsychotics and mood stabilizers. Nothing works.
So why was I a Christian? For a variety of reasons, as you can see. For all of my praying, God never took away my illness, and as the years pass, I keep getting worse. Does that prove there is no God? Of course not. However, it is undeniable that he did not answer my prayers. I have had ten psychiatric hospitalizations in total, and by now, my wife and I have no money and our credit is trashed from our inability to pay for my medical bills. My in-laws, who are evangelical Christians, will have nothing to do with me because they believe I am possessed. Other Christian relatives have told me the same. And I will never forget -- indeed, never will I forgive -- those people at my parish who completely ignored my plight. And when I turned to Jesus for comfort, I never found him. I tried, over and over. But I was alone and desolate.
As I write this, I feel nothing, but the voices are raging. I wouldn't be revealing all this if I didn't think that maybe, just maybe, I'm missing something. I used to hate God. I've gotten over that. In a way, I envy people who believe so strongly in their God. They seem to really think that they have all the answers. At this point, I no longer believe that there are answers, just questions, which is why I am loathe to make assertions -- I know full well that there is always a way to discredit something, anything, somebody says. Even reason and logic eventually fall apart under their own presuppositions.
I guess you got that novel after all. Sorry.
