My Story
This is harder for me than I thought
it would be. Now that I've moved past all of the pain and worked
through all of the issues, I'm reluctant to stir it all up again.
However, I feel that I need to tell my story so that others may benefit.
Maybe you're reading this because someone you know is mentally ill and
you're trying to understand what they're going through. Maybe you
are just curious about the mentally ill mind. Maybe you yourself
suffer from a mental illness and you're looking for a kindred spirit.
Maybe you know me and want to understand me better. (Hi, Mom!)
For whatever reason you're reading this page, I hope that you will have
a better understanding of what it's like to be mentally ill.
Where do I start? I'll start
by saying that I have been depressed for most of my life. I can remember
being depressed and having feelings of worthlessness as early as seventh
grade, and possibly sixth. The first time I ever tried to hurt myself was in ninth grade.
(I was upset about a boy so I threw a razor in the bottom of the shower
so I could "accidentally" step on it. I stepped on the handle, and
it scared me, so I picked it up.) 90% of eleventh grade is missing
from my memory. In twelfth grade, I was borderline anorexic, only
eating once a day when I could get away with it. My bones were beginning
to poke out of my back, and it scared me, so I started eating again.
The first time I almost tried to kill myself was when I was 21. I decided
to slit my wrists, but I wanted to do it in the bathtub so I wouldn't bleed
on the carpet. I wanted to be sure my roommate got the security deposit
back. Luckily, when I got up to go into the bathroom, something triggered
in me and I came to my senses. I remember throwing the knife into
the hallway and locking my bedroom door, as if it could come to life and
get me! Over the next few years, I had several more thoughts of suicide.
Luckily, somewhere along the way I picked up the idea that if you kill
yourself, you go straight to Hell. I don't know if it's true, but
I certainly didn't want to find out! Sometimes that belief was the only
thing that kept me from hurting myself.
One day I was at the doctor's
office and I saw a pamphlet about depression. It sounded just like
me! I felt better knowing that I wasn't weird, that I was sick, but
I still didn't want to talk to anyone about it. After all, I could
handle it on my own, or so I thought. I was okay for a couple more
years, but then I began having thoughts of suicide again. I actually
took Nyquil to knock myself out so that I couldn't hurt myself. At
this time, I was about 23.
I knew I had to do something,
but I didn't know what. I finally had the idea of calling the mental
health board to find a counselor with sliding scale payments. I think
someone told me to, but I don't remember who. I called and was referred
to a counseling center. I went and began therapy and, for awhile, I did start
feeling better. Unfortunately, the false memories had already begun.
I was convinced that my dad had sexually abused me, and that my mother
had known about it and let it happen. I know now that this isn't
true, but I believed it at the time. "You wouldn't remember it if
it didn't happen," my shrink Stephanie assured me. We worked through
a lot of stuff and I was starting to feel a lot better. I even did
a 12-step program. One step involved listing people I'd hurt and
things I'd done wrong. It felt good to admit all of these things
and get them off my chest. To symbolically put it all behind me,
Stephanie and I took my list and burned it in her fireplace. It was
a very liberating thing to do.
But once I stabilized, a new problem
developed. Stephanie was convinced that I was gay. Why?
Who knows. Maybe because she was gay herself. Maybe because
I was in a bad relationship. Maybe because I hated sex. She
claimed that the reason I was so unsatisfied in my relationship with my
boyfriend Art was because I was really gay. The truth was, Art was
a jerk who treated me like dirt. He was overbearing, controlling,
and he constantly cut me down. Gee, wonder why I was miserable?
And as for sex, I knew I shouldn't be doing it since Art and I weren't married.
Guilt has a way of draining the fun out of sin. I also decided that
if I became pregnant, I could never face my parents. Therefore, my
only solution would be suicide. That put an obvious damper on things,
too. It was no wonder I was miserable.
Things with Stephanie reached
a boiling point. I had referred my friend Kate to her
because she was having a hard time dealing with the death of her grandfather.
Stephanie loaned Kate a book about death, and then began cramming the gay
thing down Kate's throat. Kate finally asked me to return the book for
her because Stephanie made her uncomfortable. About this time, Stephanie
was starting to make me uncomfortable, too. She was trying to get
me to read some gay literature. She actually said, "are you so afraid
of the lifestyle that you won't even read this book of poetry?" I
finally gave her the boot. I was feeling better in general, and getting
ticked off at her and her lesbian nazism.
Life was good for awhile.
My apartment was robbed and I was scared to stay there, so my parents helped
pay for me to move in with a girl I worked with. She and her roommate
had a very nice apartment. (She lived in a much nicer section of
town.) I had my own room with its own bath. We had a washer
and dryer, a fireplace, and a swimming pool. I was living high on
the hog. Art was upset that I didn't move in with him (as he'd been
pushing me to do for the last two years), so we broke up. We still
remained friends and actually got along a lot better than when we were
a couple.
I lived with the two girls for
about three months, and then we went our separate ways. I was scared
to live in the Big City since I'd been robbed, and I couldn't afford to
live in the nice apartment by myself, so I moved back to my hometown.
I had a nice little apartment, and a nice landlord. I started dating
a guy I worked with, but he was a jerk, so I dumped him after about a month.
I was very proud of myself for that, since I now had the strength to end
a bad relationship instead of dragging it out for almost four years like
I did with Art. I was getting along well with my parents, and was finally
convinced that my little sister wasn't being abused. Life was good.
But not for long.
I began having memories that started
out as brief flashes, but eventually grew into several minutes long.
These flashbacks were terrifying. They were memories of being at
a human sacrifice, and eventually of participating in it myself.
I know now that these "memories" were hallucinations caused by my schizoaffective
disorder. But at the time, they were absolutely terrifying because
they were so real.
The original "memory" went like
this. I'm standing in front of a stone alter, with a lot of people
in dark hooded robes standing in a circle. I'm with them, but I'm
a child. I figure out that my mother is standing next to me.
On the alter is an old man. My father is the high priest, and he
has a dagger raised over his head. The old man is conscious and begging
for his life, and praying for our souls. My dad plunges the dagger
into his neck and catches the blood in a goblet or bowl. Kicking
and screaming, I'm "baptized" with his blood into the coven. You
can see why I was scared of these memories.
I had other flashbacks of satanic
rituals, including one in which my mother gave birth to a premature baby
who was then sacrificed. I had flashbacks of myself in a similar
situation. I knew something was drastically wrong with me.
I sought help.
After my fiasco with Stephanie
the Lesbian Avenger, I decided to go to a Christian counseling agency.
I found one nearby and gave them a call. I told them that I had been
having these flashbacks but I didn't think they could be true. How
could they? My parents were good Christian people!
The agency set me up with a counselor,
Juliana. For awhile things seemed okay. I told her about the
memories, convinced that I had picked them up from a movie or book I had
read. But it was the same old thing. "You wouldn't remember
it if it hadn't have happened. You know details that wouldn't be
in a book or a movie." I finally admitted I had another problem,
too.
For the last several months, I
had been hearing voices in my head. Then I began seeing people in
my head, and interacting with them. They were all different ages,
and they told me that they would take care of me since I wasn't strong
enough to take care of myself. I let them. I had multiple personalities.
They claimed that they had been developing over the course of my life (I
was about 24 at this time), and that they had split off of me at different
times for different reasons. I'm still not sure whether I really
had multiple personalities or if they were more hallucinations caused by
the schizoaffective disorder.
Juliana and I worked on getting
to know the alters (personalities), and on going through the memories.
I still wasn't convinced they were true, but here was a professional telling
me that they had to be. I accepted what she told me.
Then she told me I couldn't have
any further contact with my parents. If they found out that I remembered
the rituals, they would either try to kill me or reprogram me. I
wasn't allowed to talk to them on the phone, either, because they could
utter simple key phrases that would shift me back into the programmed state
of mind. She said if I was strong enough to not be reprogrammed,
they would kill me. I worried about my sister, but Juliana said the
best thing I could do for her was to get myself well and then go get her.
She said they could program my sister to reprogram me. (Don't we
sound like a bunch of VCR's?)
I told her that my parents couldn't
possibly be satanists because they were Christians. She said that
posing as Christians was a common thing that satanists do because then
no one would suspect them of being satanists. I wasn't convinced,
and wanted to confront them in her office. I told her that I would
know from their reaction if it were true or not. She refused.
She claimed that satanists could "drain her anointing" from God.
That was my first clue that maybe something was wrong. No demon could
drain the anointing of the Holy Spirit!
But my fear that she may be right
overshadowed my doubts. I had read a few books on the subject by
this time, and they all confirmed what Juliana said: if you remember it,
it must have happened. I also remembered Mike Warnke, a Christian
comedian, who claimed to have been in a satanic cult. My flashbacks
matched his stories. By this time, my own flashbacks had become more
and more intense, and more and more frightening. I cut off all contact
with my family.
This went on for well over a year.
Then I read two books that made me start to doubt my own memories.
One was called Remembering Satan, and it was about two sisters in
California who had false memories of being in a satanic cult. Their
stories sounded eerily similar to mine. In fact, all other cases
that I heard sounded eerily similar to mine. How could so many different
people all experience the same exact thing? The second book was called
Suffer the Child. It was about a woman who really had been
forced to participate in rituals as a child. But her story was different.
She had scars on her body that coincided with ritual wounds. She
remembered places where rituals had taken place, and was able to go back
to them years later. One house even had satanic symbols painted on
the walls of the room in which she remembered rituals taking place.
I was more convinced than ever that nothing like this had ever happened
to me.
And something strange was going
on with Juliana. She left the agency and began seeing me, unsupervised,
in her home. She got weird. She started praying that God would
"reveal" more rituals to me. She didn't want to talk about anything
but the rituals. She often called me "Melody." I didn't even
have an alter named Melody, so I don't know where she got that name.
She kept referring to my dad as a minister, when I'd told her time and
time again that he was an elder, not a minister. She kept pushing
me to remember more and more. I finally realized that it was entirely
possible that I would begin subconsciously making stuff up just to make
her happy. I finally stopped seeing her. She never called to
find out why.
But one good thing did come out
of the experience with Juliana. She got me on medication. I
started on Zoloft. I was amazed at how different everything was.
My mind began to clear up (it was usually a muddled mess). I wasn't
as sad all the time. I felt hopeful for the first time in years.
I decided it was time to take the next step.
I decided to see my parents.
I was still scared that what Juliana told me may be true, but I was tired
of being scared all the time. I also missed my family, especially
my little sister. She had started counseling by this time (she had
attempted suicide), and her counselor wanted to meet me as part of Becki's
therapy. I agreed. I decided that even if my parents killed
me, I was a Christian and would go to Heaven. I was tired of being
scared and alone. I met Becki's counselor and talked to her, and then
Becki went in for her appointment. During that time, I admitted everything
to my parents. They finally understood why I had ignored them.
(I was not allowed to tell them that I knew they were satanists or they
would kill me, according to Juliana.) It felt really good, and we
began rebuilding our relationship.
There was another problem during
this time. I had been living with a guy, Eric. I knew that it
was wrong, but I did it anyway. We were engaged when we moved in
together, but decided to postpone the wedding on the advice of our minister.
Eric decided that we had broken up and began dating while we still lived together.
This brought on a severe depression and a serious physical illness, which
I believe was the start of my fibromyalgia. I became suicidal, as
he would go out with the bimbo and then come home and climb in bed with
me, and tell me it was MY fault for feeling miserable. I decided
I needed counseling again.
I almost ended up in the mental
hospital that time. I went to see my regular doctor about my physical
illness, and I admitted to him I wanted to kill myself. If I wouldn't
have had an appointment with my new shrink right after my appointment with
the doc, he would have sent me to the hospital. He had even asked
one of his assistants to take me. I begged him not to send me there,
though, since I didn't have insurance and I didn't want to go. He
relented, but made me promise to call him as soon as I got to the counseling
center. I did, and this time, I got a normal counselor.
The advice from both the counselor
and my doctor was the same: get Eric out of there! I finally got to
the point where I told him I would kill myself if he didn't move out (not
a lie). That got him out of there! Ironically, the bimbo he
was dating dumped him a week later. I laughed so hard because justice
had been served! But I began getting better.
Things went well for awhile.
I got my dream job working at a major university. I could take free
classes and finish my degree. I liked my job and the people I worked
with. I had my own apartment, since Eric had moved out. I had
a kitty, and life was good. I began rebuilding my relationship with
my family.
I was still haunted by the false
memories. Why would I imagine such horrible things about my family?
Julie, my new shrink, said that sometimes our minds do make up awful things.
At last, someone told me the truth! My mind could make stuff
up! But I still wasn't diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, the
true source of these "memories."
Julie quit to have a baby, and
I was much better, so I didn't go back to counseling. Things were
going pretty good for me, except my physical health began to decay.
Otherwise, things were going okay. Then one day my mom showed me
a book about ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). She noticed that I
had most of the symptoms on the list. I looked at it and realized
that I had ALL of the symptoms on the list. Wow! I made an
appointment to see my sister's shrink for drugs.
Dr. Desai was a nice guy. He
asked me a few questions and decided that I did in fact have ADD.
He also determined that I have a slight case of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive
Disorder). (I have a prayer that I repeat in my head over and over
and over, and I can't stop. It's awful. It's worse because
it's not even a real prayer anymore, just a bunch of words.) He gave
me Welbutrin, and it helped immensely. My thoughts cleared up, and
I could control the prayer.
But I was about to experience another
psychotic episode. One day while I was surfing the web, I stumbled upon a
web site of a guy who had a lot in common with me. When I found his website, a voice in my head said
"this is your husband." Yeah, right, I thought. That was crazy.
When I saw how much we had in common, I decided to e-mail him.
Turns out he was married.
I will refer to him as MG (Married Guy) from now on. MG and I sent
several e-mail letters back and forth, and he finally revealed that he was separated
from his wife. He told me more details, and I could understand why
he would leave her. And since the voice, which I was convinced was
God speaking to me, kept insisting that I was going to marry this guy,
I believed all the pieces were falling into place.
Our relationship became closer
and closer, and we fell in love. He even came to see me one weekend.
(It was a totally platonic visit. We didn't even kiss, let alone
anything else. He was a married man, and we were both determined
not to cross any boundaries.) But eventually, his wife had a change
of heart and repented of her evil ways. He went back to her.
I was devastated. We ended our relationship. After all, how
could he try to make his marriage work with me still in his life?
I never told him about hearing the voice, because first of all I didn't
want him to think I was nuts, and secondly, I didn't want to influence
his decisions. He will always be special to me, and he'll always
have a place in my heart.
I knew hearing God in your head
was a sign of mental illness. But I was afraid to admit it.
One day I found a website that
helps diagnose mental problems. I took it for fun, and it suggested
that I had a schizoid disorder. This bothered me, because I didn't
want to be schizophrenic. That was a scary illness. Oh, well,
it was just a stupid test, right? But the voice was chattering at
me nonstop now. I knew I had to address the problem.
I finally told Dr. Desai about the
voice. I told him about the on-line test, too. He asked me
some questions, and determined that I have schizoaffective disorder.
He started me on antipsychotic medication (Risperdal), and the voice went
away.
Today I am mentally healthy.
My conditions are under control as long as I take my medication regularly.
Sometimes I have a set-back, but these are very minor and usually only
last for a few days or a couple of weeks at the most. It's been a
long, hard road, and I wish I had been diagnosed with the schizoaffective
disorder sooner. But I'm better now, and I have a good life.
I have a husband who adores me, and a nice little house, and two kitties.
At last, I am mentally stable.
I hope my story has informed and
inspired you. Just remember: never give up! Keep fighting until
you get the help you need!
