Why

I have been to a place of darkness which words alone could never even begin to express. I have felt an unimaginable suffering that you could never understand unless you have felt it yourself, and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. All the life inside me was consumed. All the light was gone. I felt only death could save me from this pain. I had no desire to live any longer. A sense of hopelessness swept over me that left me feeling desperate and more alone then I ever thought possible. Nothing could reach me in this place and my own mind betrayed me. I felt insane. This sickness consumed my mind, body, and spirit and I could feel nothing but a twisted sense of pure negativity that blocked out anything positive. I stayed alive for one reason only… I had a baby growing inside of me. This gave me no comfort, instead it left me feeling trapped and suffocated. With every breath I took I felt complete agony. I had nothing left. I turned to God… I was full of pure rage. “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME??? HAVEN’T I BEEN THROUGH ENOUGH??? WHAT COULD I POSSIBLY LEARN FROM FEELING THIS PAIN??? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY DO YOU HATE ME SO MUCH???” I was so angry I would just sit alone in a room sobbing uncontrollably. Over and over again I would ask God Why? I would beg for the pain to go away. I wanted relief. I was so alone. Lost in the dark. I started to doubt that God even existed at all. If God existed where was He and how could he let this happen? I have had more then my share of pain in my life and all through it, all I hung on to was God. I felt He had betrayed me now, just like everyone else on earth. In my past I have been raped five different times, molested several other times starting from the age of 5 years old. I was let down by the justice system when I was held captive by one of my rapists because the police believed me to be just a young naïve girl looking for attention. Meanwhile I had suffered 3 days of torture and was told if I left I would watch as my 2 year old daughter was murdered in front of me. The police said this was not enough of a threat for me to stay and I should have run away. I have been beaten, abused, assaulted, betrayed, lied to, and taken advantage of, abandoned, and unloved... I was 18 years old when I held my first son, a beautiful tiny little baby named Jacob, in my arms as he breathed his last breath and God took him home to heaven. I had watched him struggle for life for 29 days feeling powerless and wanting nothing more then to take his pain away. I accepted every thing life dealt me with strength and courage. Many times I lost everything I had or it was stolen from me and I didn’t know how I would get by. I always turned to God because I believed God loved me and would never leave me. I never turned away from God and I trusted Him with all of my heart. On the day I found out that my youngest child, a baby boy who was conceived by rape, had suffered brain damage as a complication of his prematurity, I got down on my knees and prayed. Doctors didn’t know how severe the damage was or what effects it could have on him. They told me he may be severely mentally and physically handicapped and have a very poor quality of life. I said “if he can feel happy and I can make him laugh that’s all that counts, and I will love him no matter what.” I felt peace knowing God was with me and I trusted that everything would be ok. My little boy isn’t mentally handicapped at all and trust me I can make him laugh. He may spend the rest of his life in a wheel chair but I have accepted the challenge of taking care of him with my whole heart. He is beautiful and every single day I have thanked God for trusting me with his life. For 30 years I stood by my belief in God and nothing ever made me question that belief. But now here I was full of rage, wishing for death, and having extreme doubts. Was there really a God? If so then why had he turned his back on me? If anyone ever had a reason to stop believing trust me it would have been me. I laid in a bed in a psychiatric hospital at the lowest point a human being can ever reach and I stared at the ceiling, sobbing, feeling entirely hopeless and completely abandoned. I had a choice to make. Give up or fight. I didn’t want to be strong anymore. I didn’t want to care. All I wanted to do was die. I was exhausted and could see no point in life anymore. My mind was merciless and my thoughts tortured me relentlessly. I had already accepted so much pain in my past and I felt I had stood strong through it all and now I wondered what was the point? Was it EVER going to STOP??? It seemed hopeless and I didn’t think I could take any more. Where was God? Why fight anymore? I had NEVER before asked why because I always felt I knew the answer. I always believed there was a higher purpose. I had always thought maybe all this happened because it was preparing me for something. Maybe one day I could be an example for other people. I thought I could inspire other people and show them the way to God. I wanted to be the person to pick people up and bring them to a path of healing. I believed there was a reason behind everything I had suffered and that reason was that it prepared me to be able to help other people in need. But I thought after 30 years I was as prepared as a person could be and I naively believed I was on the right path. But I come to you today humbled and ashamed to tell you I had it all wrong and I paid a steep price for my own arrogance. My motives were in the right place but I was deceiving myself. I believed I was walking with God but I had a very distorted image of who God was and I formed this image for my own benefit, to suit my own desires. Sure I believed the part about God being love and that He wanted us to love our neighbors as ourselves. I believed in forgiveness. I gave everything I could to anyone who was in need. I would give the shirt off my back in a heart beat and I was more then willing to go without so that another person could have enough. I helped people even when they hurt me. I forgave my sons father even after he had raped me. He did terrible things to me and I had to take my children into hiding for 3 years to escape his violence. I ‘ran’ into him one day last summer and I saw he was a different person. He was trying to change his life and get off of street drugs. He wanted to better himself but didn’t have the means to do so and he felt he could never change his life the way he wanted. He told me he was sorry for the things he had done to me. I found it in my heart to forgive him and I helped him get his drivers license back and then I had a friend of mine give him a job. I am proud to say he is off the streets now and he has been for over a year. He kept the job and was even promoted. He met someone and fell in love and now he is engaged. I even let him come and visit my son sometimes although I still feel very protective and will never let myself or my son be left alone with him. I was forgiving of everyone no matter what and I was full of love which I shared generously. But that was the only important thing I thought there was. Didn’t this make me a ‘good Christian’? My definition of a sin was anything that hurt another person. As long as my actions didn’t appear to hurt anyone I figured it was ok. But I was blind to the fact that my actions were hurting someone… they were hurting me. While in the hospital, I found out that a lot of what was happening to me was due to some very serious medical issues, I was transferred from the psychiatric hospital to a medical hospital. When I received treatment for my illness it helped me to get out of the thickest part of that darkness, but because of what happened I had lost so much and my heart ached. I was angry that this had happened, it was so unfair, and I had no control over it, now I was powerless to change it. What I had lost was gone and I felt that loss deeply every minute of every day. I feel it even now. One day I looked up and I prayed “God please just tell me why? I need to know and you are the only one who can tell me. I am having trouble believing in You, I feel you have turned Your back on me, and I need help.” The next morning I woke up from a dream and in my dream I was sitting alone at a table and from inside me I was pulling out these strange black spheres and setting each one of them on the table and seeing for the first time how black and ugly each one was. They were all different sizes and each one contained a slimy black mucousy substance that stuck to my hands and made a sick mess of everything it touched. I didn’t even want to look at it, but I knew I had to open each and every one of them to see what was inside. When I woke up I picked up my journal and just started to write. That’s when I discovered the truth. I was carrying a lot of sin inside me without even being aware of it. I had become neglectful and full of arrogance and pride. I had lied to and betrayed people who cared about me. I had done some very ugly and terrible things which I didn’t want to admit. I carried this distorted image of God and shaped his image to serve me. How could I ever be an example to other people and inspire other people when I didn’t even know God at all? I was a fake. I am disgusted with the person I had become, it wasn’t who I really was inside and it wasn’t the person God had intended me to be. I was betraying myself. I was letting down all the people who loved me and I let God down too. After discovering this about myself something else happened that really changed things for me. The other day my 9 year old daughter was very disrespectful to me and as a result I took away all of her privileges and sent her to her room. She sat in her room and sobbed “Please Mommy, please I am sorry, please let me come out.” All of a sudden I saw an image of myself praying to God crying and begging “Please God, Please Help me. Please take this pain away. I’m so sorry. I am just so sorry!” It hit me like a tonne of bricks. When I heard my daughter cry it hurt me a lot and my first instinct was to open the door and let her come out. I didn’t want to see her suffer. But this wasn’t the first time she had acted this way and I had let her off before only to have her continue to repeat the same behaviour over and over again. I wanted to let her off but then what would she learn? I knew she felt abandoned by me, like I wasn’t listening. It broke my heart to hear her say, “You don’t love me or you wouldn’t be so mean.” It gave me such an eerie feeling of familiarity. I wondered is this how God feels? Could it really be the same? I thought God had turned his back on me. I thought maybe he didn’t exist at all. He surely hated me to let this happen and to leave me to feel this pain. But seeing my daughter that way opened my eyes. God does love me, and he doesn’t want to see me suffer any more then I want to see my daughter suffer. But there was a lesson he has probably been trying to teach me for a very long time and it took drastic measures to finally open my eyes. Please understand I am not writing this to you as a person who is all better now and can look back and say “yeah God exists, I know it because now I am so happy.” No. This story does NOT end with… and she lived happily ever after. It would be easier for someone to tell you all about how awesome God is and how you should believe in Him when their life is good. You might think of course you can say that everything is great for you now. However this message is coming from a person who is hurting. A person who struggles to find hope and joy in their life, to have a life, and to make sense of what has happened. I still feel very lost. I still feel a lot of anger. I wake up in tears every morning… and I pray. I go to bed crying every night… and I pray. I am grieving deeply for the love I lost. Sometimes I think I am not strong enough for this and I can’t bear it for even one more minute… but then I turn to God. There are still so many questions I have. But one question I don’t struggle with anymore is why? I know in my heart why this happened just as I know in my heart that God does exist and His love is great. With that knowledge I am starting to feel a sense of hope again and once again I am reaching out for God… If anyone can get me through this it is Him. I wish everyone who is hurting or struggling could find comfort in that. With God’s help I have decided to fight!!! Trust me it is a battle every single minute of every single day to walk through my pain and find myself again. I feel utterly worthless sometimes and have trouble dealing with all that I have done. I have many regrets. If I could take it all back I would in a moment. But at least I finally know without a doubt that I am not doing it alone. God is with me!!!
May you always feel His presence in your life too.

Broken Mind and Broken Heart

You can only imagine what it is like to slowly feel yourself slip away and turn into something ugly and horrible and have absolutely no power to stop it. I felt like I was watching myself outside of my own body but had no control. Inside I was screaming for it to STOP!!! But there was no connection with what I was, and what I had become. I couldn't tell you when it started exactly I had no idea it was happening until it was too late. At first I felt tired and irritable. I started to catch myself snapping at people for no reason. I thought maybe I just needed more sleep and so I started taking long naps during the day when my kids were at school. Then I started to feel dizzy and my hands and feet felt numb. So I went to the doctor who performed some routine blood tests and found nothing wrong. It progressed into feelings of anxiety and an inability to sleep at night. I was having trouble eating and had no desire to do so. I hid my irrational feelings from everyone. I didn't want anyone to think I was crazy. I started to feel very insecure and pick myself apart constantly. My mind refused to rest and all my judgments were harsh and painful. The negative self talk would spin in my head for hours with no relief. I started thinking I was a horrible person, a horrible failure as a mother, and someone who would never accomplish anything in life. I became extremely paranoid that people wanted to hurt me and at times I was afraid to leave my house. I found that everything that made me happy and brought me joy in my life no longer made me feel good. In my intimate relationship I was no longer able to connect with my partner which hurt me deeply and caused problems in the relationship. I also started to become paranoid that he too wanted to hurt me and I started having 'conversations' with him about our relationship almost every time we got together. I no longer felt I could trust anyone. I buried these feelings as deep as I could and tried not to react to them. I tried to go on with my life and work it out. I wore a mask and smiled at everyone while inside I was constantly torturing myself. It was the worst at night when everything was quiet. My mind would spin and spin until I was crying my eyes out, holding my head trying to contain the thoughts, and BEGGING God to make it stop!!! I went to my doctor again and finally confessed some of what I was feeling and he prescribed a higher dose of anti-depressants for me. Weeks later, I became very sick and went to the hospital to find out that I had a stricture in my intestine and had to have a medical procedure done to correct it. I wasn't able to care for my children as my son has Cerebral Palsy and I couldn't lift him. So I was isolated in my home alone. I had all the free time in the world for my mind to wander off into dark places and it was too much for me, the loneliness of not having my children around was unbearable. I was starting to get desperate and what I was feeling was starting to become something I could no longer contain. I argued with my partner because he had to work and was unable to be there. I started to resent him. I stopped being there for him and trying to understand him. When the kids came home things were a little better and I started a new project which occupied a lot of my time and this too made things feel almost bearable. I thought everything was getting better and started to have hope. That's when the worst thing possible happened. I found out I was pregnant. Everything I had been feeling before tripled in intensity and became frightening and agonizing. I felt like the worst failure that ever lived. My desperation overwhelmed me. I beat myself up constantly, how could I be single and be having my third child? What kind of person did this make me? I felt like the most irresponsible person who ever walked even though I had done everything possible to prevent it. I was horribly ashamed. As you can imagine the negative self talk took over again and my head would spin with self hate almost every minute of the day. I had not only screwed up my own life but I had screwed up my children's lives and my partners’ life. I started to believe that he would abandon me just like everyone else had. I mean why would he want to stay with someone like me? I had nothing to offer him and now I was trapping him with this baby that he didn't want. I couldn't have an abortion because I would never forgive myself, and I would never be able to live with myself. I would feel like a murderer. I looked at the faces of my children and thought what if I had done that to them? Don’t think I didn’t consider it though it would have been the easiest solution for me but it wouldn't have been right. I just knew I didn’t have it in me. I failed my partner in that as well. I started to feel terror at the thought of being alone and having this baby by myself. My terror consumed me and blinded me. I had always dreamed of how wonderful it would be to be pregnant and share it with someone that I loved and I had never experienced that. My other pregnancies had been the loneliest times in my life and I didn't feel I could go through that again. This was my worst nightmare and it was coming true. He would tell me that he wasn't leaving but I couldn't hear it, in my mind he had already left. My mind wouldn't let me rest, it constantly played back memories from my past of how horrible it had been when I had my other children alone. I was convinced that this would happen to me again and I became even more desperate. I became lost and all rational thought was gone. I started fighting with my partner every single time I saw him or talked to him, pressuring him to make more of a commitment to me then he was ready for. I started threatening him that I would run away and he would never see me or the baby. I used guilt, blame, and blackmail to try to control him. I became obsessed and called him constantly then b*tched at him the minute he answered the phone. This WASN'T me!!! I HATED this person!!! I was lost inside somewhere and this cruel manipulative b*tch took over. I was powerless to stop it. I really tried as hard as I could but I had no rest. I loved him so much but I got lost. I lived in constant despair torturing myself over and over again and hating myself on the deepest level imaginable. I felt abandoned. I felt INSANE. That’s when I started to feel as if life was no longer worth living and I started having thoughts of death as a relief. I was only able to fall asleep at night by imagining myself dead and not feeling this pain anymore. The only thing that was stopping me from ending my life was the baby inside me. I became more and more irrational and pushed my partner further and further away. He tried, but he could do nothing right by me. I could no longer hide what I was feeling. I was very sick and I had lost all control. Then one day I decided to take my kids to the drive-in. We got half way there and the thoughts continued to consume me. I asked my daughter to put on my favorite CD so I could try to drown out the thoughts and she told me that she had taken the CD out of the van. I LOST IT!!!! I have NEVER EVER lost it to such an extent in all my life. I pulled the van over and started to just SCREAM in a voice I didn't even recognize as my own. I have no idea what I said just that I couldn't stop. Inside my head I was telling myself to STOP that I was hurting my little girl and I needed to STOP but I had ZERO control. It went on and on... I was finally able to make myself get out of the van and walk around outside until I had some sense of control. I took the kids to my Mom's house because I was scared. They stayed there for the next few days. I couldn't even get out of bed. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I felt hopeless and desperate. I beat myself up because I couldn't control this and I didn't know how to make it stop. I didn't know who this person was that had taken control over me, I felt possessed. I checked in to a psychiatric hospital, I knew I needed help and my therapist agreed. In the 3 years she had known me, even through some extremely difficult times, she had never seen me this way. The truth is I had never felt this way before in my life. I knew there was something horribly wrong. It reached an ultimate low after that. I took a pass from the hospital and I went to my partners house and we had another fight during which I ended the relationship. He took me to my Mom's house, my Mom was angry that I came there so late and woke her up and she yelled at me and said things which really hurt so I walked out of the house, I had nowhere to go. I felt utterly hopeless. I ended up in a nearby park lying on the ground in the rain, and my mind was completely gone. I wanted to die and started thinking about how I could achieve this. But I had the baby... I felt trapped. I started thinking if I stepped in front of a transport truck and managed to protect my tummy that maybe I would be brain dead but the baby would be able to live. Ok I was irrational but not stupid I knew that wouldn't work. Then I thought about a severe head injury and if I could figure out how to hit myself in the right place that I could develop amnesia. Lastly I started thinking about running far away, just getting on a bus and disappearing forever. These thoughts terrified me and I didn’t know where to turn. I could feel every last bit of my true self slipping away and I needed help. I used my cell phone to call my partner because there had been a time when he always made me feel better, he was amazing at bringing me back to reality. However, it was a HUGE mistake!!! I had no rational thought left, I started blaming him for everything. I told him I HATED him and he disgusted me. I called him a liar. Then I told him if he didn't come back to me and give me what I wanted that I would kill myself and the baby. Those are just the things I remember saying to him I am sure there was more and just as awful, maybe worse. When it was finally over I had no hope left in the world but I sat there and I thought of my children and the baby I was carrying. I prayed for help and felt calm for a moment. Calm enough to walk back to my Mom's house and go to sleep for a short time. I woke up sobbing uncontrollably and asked my Mom to drive me back to the hospital. While I was in the hospital I met with a dietician who wanted to help me with my eating for my babies’ health. I explained to her the situation and that I felt there was something wrong and it wasn't just that I was depressed. She actually listened to me and she cared. She ordered a full screen of all my vitamins and essential nutrients. That's when I found out I had become mal-nourished and extremely nutrient deficient. My body was completely depleted and my hemoglobin was extremely low. I found this information on a web site about depression:

Here's a rundown of recent finding about the relationship of vitamin deficiency to depression:Vitamin B1 (thiamine): The brain uses this vitamin to help convert glucose, or blood sugar, into fuel, and without it the brain rapidly runs out of energy. This can lead to fatigue, depression, irritability, anxiety, and even thoughts of suicide. Deficiencies can also cause memory problems, loss of appetite, insomnia, and gastrointestinal disorders.
Vitamin B3 (niacin): Pellagra-which produces psychosis and dementia, among other symptoms-was eventually found to be caused by niacin deficiency.
Vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid): Symptoms of deficiency are fatigue, chronic stress, and depression. Vitamin B5 is needed for hormone formation and the uptake of amino acids and the brain chemical acetylcholine, which combine to prevent certain types of depression.
Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine): This vitamin aids in the processing of amino acids, which are the building blocks of all proteins and some hormones. It is needed in the manufacture of serotonin, melatonin and dopamine.
Vitamin B12: Because vitamin B12 is important to red blood cell formation, deficiency leads to an oxygen-transport problem known as pernicious anemia. This disorder can cause mood swings, paranoia, irritability, confusion, dementia, hallucinations, or mania, eventually followed by appetite loss, dizziness, weakness, shortage of breath, heart palpitations, diarrhea, and tingling sensations in the extremities.
Vitamin C: Subclinical deficiencies can produce depression, which requires the use of supplements. Stress, pregnancy, and lactation also increase the body's need for vitamin C.
Minerals:
Deficiencies in a number of minerals can also cause depression.Magnesium: Deficiency can result in depressive symptoms, along with confusion, agitation, anxiety, and hallucinations, as well as a variety of physical problems.
Calcium: Depletion affects the central nervous system. Low levels of calcium cause nervousness, apprehension, irritability, and numbness.
Zinc: Inadequacies result in apathy, lack of appetite, and lethargy. When zinc is low, copper in the body can increase to toxic levels, resulting in paranoia and fearfulness.
Iron: Depression is often a symptom of chronic iron deficiency. Other symptoms include general weakness, listlessness, exhaustion, lack of appetite, and headaches.
Manganese: This metal is needed for proper use of the B-complex vitamins and vitamin C. Since it also plays a role in amino-acid formation, a deficiency may contribute to depression stemming from low levels of the neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine.Potassium: Depletion is frequently associated with depression, tearfulness, weakness, and fatigue.

I was deficient in all of these vitamins and especially Calcium, iron, zinc, and potassium. I was also protein deficient and vitamin D deficient which also can cause depression. When I became pregnant my problem worsened as my baby was taking everything and caused me to become further depleted in these vitamins and nutrients. I was transferred from the psychiatric hospital to a medical hospital where I had a PIK line implanted (which is a long tube which starts in your arm and leads up through a major artery into the heart) and was given Total parenteral nutrition (TPN), which is the practice of feeding a person intreveniously, bypassing the usual process of eating and digestion. The person receives nutritional formulas containing salts, glucose, amino acids, lipids and added vitamins. Within days I no longer had the extreme depression and I started to feel like the old me. I stayed at the hospital for 3 weeks and was eventually weaned off the TPN and able to eat (with supplementation) enough to support myself and the baby. I still need to be given injections of certain vitamins and I have to take a lot of supplements. I am going to be ok physically and I get stronger everyday. But I have lost something which meant the world to me. I lost my first love and the father of my child. My dreams of sharing my pregnancy with someone have been shattered. I unintentionally drove away the only man I have ever loved. I can never take back the things that I said. I apologized to him but that isn't enough. He will always remember me as that insane person who treated him horribly and hurt him deeply. I can tell when I try to talk to him that he still sees me that way. It is hard not to be consumed with guilt and beat myself up for what happened. Although the depression has lessened, the hurt of losing him is immense. I cry myself to sleep sometimes wishing I could take it all back. I can never make it right and I don't blame him for wanting nothing more to do with me, I despised the person I had become and can't imagine what it was like for him to be on the other side of that. My worst nightmare has become my reality. I am having my baby alone. I lost my first love. The only person I have ever loved. I have become a nuisance to him now and a constant source of stress. He no longer has any feelings for me and will probably never forgive me. The only thing I can do is let him go. He deserved so much more then what he got. But I did too. I had no chance, every part of me was controlled by this sickness, my mind, body, and soul. I miss him deeply. But I refuse to take the role of the victim. I took my health for granted for such a long time. I cared more about being skinny then about taking care of myself. I was at one point 300lbs and I never wanted to be that way again and I never realized what the costs would be of constant starvation diets and taking diet pills that were designed for extremely overweight people when I only had 20lbs left to lose. Losing my mind wasn't something I could control but taking care of my health should have been more of a priority for me then looking perfect. I am NOT that person I became. I NEVER get angry like that and I love people and care very much for others. I live by 2 motto's, if I can't be a person in someone's life who brings happiness, and enrichment then I don't want to be a part of their lives at all, and if it isn't fun - it isn't worth it. I live my life for the moment and do my best to bring joy to the lives around me. I want only to inspire people and I want to be the one who brings comfort to those in need. I hate b*tching and nagging and feel that it is a waste of time. My children are my life and I live for them and I would NEVER do anything to intentionally hurt them. What I became went against everything I believe in and was absolutely disgusting on every level!!! The sad part is that I can never take it back. I can never take it back... I carry a baby inside me that was created through a love that was pure and unconditional. I will cherish this child for the rest of my life and even at this point I would give up everything to make sure he arrives safely in this world. I lost my love, that hurts more then I ever imagined was possible, but I carry a part of him inside me and I will have that to hold onto for the rest of my life!!!