Impending Doom feat. Ryan Clark, “My Light Unseen,” Track #9 on Baptized in Filth, 2012.I suffer through this path, I waited for the hope within this black
My heart’s a dead machine, every sin will stain my soul
Thank God to wash me clean
My light unseen
Somebody, help
Break my fall, now carry me
Somebody, help
“When you have a calling to help people, your first patient must be yourself.” Last May, after I finally reached my breaking point and called the suicide hotline, I checked into a crisis stabilization unit. While in the waiting room, one of the crisis counselors who transported me spoke these words. That one sentence awakened my light unseen.
I held on to that tiny, seemingly unperceived glimmer of hope, believing it to be the final scrap of good in a wasted life. Even beyond my stabilization, I questioned the purpose of my place on this earth. Was I just lucky that all my attempts had failed? Was God making me live out hell on earth? Or did my escape from rock bottom even mean anything at all? Now, here I am, nearly a year later. And I am ready to tell my story.
Over the last year, I have hinted at bits and pieces of my story. But until now, I have not felt comfortable discussing such matters in detail. Even still, there are parts of my life, specifically my childhood, that I am not yet ready to describe. I wanted to create a new category of posts where I reflect on my life. How I have—and have not—lived by the Logos. But most importantly, how I have found hope.
In November, I started working as a behavioral health technician for a residential mental health facility. Given my history with both substance abuse and mental health, I figured I would at least try it out. Daily, I encounter people who are going through what I have escaped. I take pride in the fact that my story has given hope to quite a few people. Why stop there?
One year ago, at this very moment, you could have told me there would be hope for me. I might have verbally agreed with you, but inside, I would have never believed it. I was lost. I was hopeless. I was an absolute trainwreck. I maintained that there was no purpose in living. I believed my life was over. And oddly enough, that the preceding sentence still holds a degree of truth. My life was over. My life of walking in darkness was nearing its end. In seeking to end my life, I actually began it.
Childhood
I am going to keep this section as brief as possible. I would ignore it entirely, but I must draw some details to explain where I come from fully.
I was born on April 24th, 2000, at 7:13 PM, weighing 7 pounds and 13 ounces. I was the tenth and final child my mother would bring into this world. She was 45 at the time. She had already birthed nine children. She had two miscarriages prior to my birth. The odds of me being born without Down syndrome or major birth defects were slim to none. Her doctor, a Christian man, encouraged her to get an abortion. She refused.
I have eleven siblings. Six years after my birth, my mother adopted my younger brother, Cameron. We were all homeschooled. We went to church every Sunday and Wednesday. For the first nine years of my life, we attended a large Southern Baptist Church. We left once the pastor got caught sleeping with his secretary (big surprise—not).
All of us children participated in extracurricular activities outside of church. My sisters did karate or ballet. My brothers played baseball and football. As a child, I suffered from asthma. This condition limited me to participating in certain activities. About the time we left the Baptist church, I joined Boy Scouts.
Also, around the same time, I was struggling with weight. My family and friends frequently ridiculed me for being a “fat boy.” Finally, much to my “father’s” disdain, my mother signed me up for the local swim team. My mother required me to join the team so that 1) I could participate in a sport that would not worsen my asthma and 2) I would lose weight. For the first two years, I did not find much enjoyment in it.
Several years later, when I had a lot of aggression built up, swimming became my avenue for releasing such anger. I developed a sincere appreciation for the sport and quickly became one of the team’s top swimmers. It is a paramount part of my life that cannot go unmentioned. Much of my worldview comes from what I call the “philosophy of swimming.” I will discuss this more in later posts.
Addiction
I cannot paint an overview of my life without touching on one of the most heartbreaking, yet definitive traits of mine: my addictive personality. The same year I joined the swim team, I smoked my first cigarette. I smoked weed for the first time. I had my first taste of alcohol. Each of these activities disgusted me. But it was around then that I looked at porn for the first time. Like the others, it disgusted me at first… then it became all I could do.
I kept my porn addiction a secret for many years. Although I managed to kick it at 18, it is something that I find much harder to discuss than my addiction to alcohol. My addictive personality truly began when I became hooked on pornography. Ten years later, I would check into rehab for alcohol and weed addiction. Within those ten years, my addictions slowly evolved. I picked up drinking and smoking regularly at the age of fourteen, and lost control after my mom’s death.
Now, I was not raised in an environment where the disease of addiction was proactively discussed. I was raised in a religious atmosphere. Addiction was simply a myth; it was the disease of choice that was impressed upon my mind. It was a question of faith. The alcoholics and addicts of this world simply did not have the right relationship with Jesus. They could not distinguish good from evil. Because in the mind of a fundamentalist or evangelical, everything is black and white.
My “father” is an alcoholic. My mother struggled with drug dependence in high school and college. And for those who know anything at all about addiction, it is largely genetic. Had we had discussions about addiction, things might have played out differently. Had I not been under the impression that addicts burn in hell, I might have known how to better handle the situation if and when it came up.
But mainstream Christianity is the primary poison in my life. It stripped me down into thinking that I would never be good enough. That if I ever so much as touched a drop of alcohol, I would have a miserable life and be spiritually tormented after death. The disease of religion ruined my life. Sadly, it would not be for many years that I would learn I could be spiritual without being religious. That I would not go to hell if I stopped going to church. The legalistic nature of religion, and Christianity in particular, has made my journey much darker.
Mental Health and Suicide
I would not be formally diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder until 2020. Therapy was never encouraged growing up. Psychology went against the grain of religion and, therefore, it was kept from me. But I struggled with this disease long before my diagnosis. I mentioned earlier that I am not ready to discuss my childhood. Well, that is because there is a lot of repressed trauma from that time. There is a lot that I never got to work through. And each day, even now, it haunts me.
It is no secret that people misunderstand MDD. There is a nasty stigma surrounding it in the United States. Let me tell you that it is not just feeling sad. And it is definitely not feeling this way for no reason. It is devastating. Unfortunately, there is no age limit for struggling with depression. I know now that I struggled with it as a child. But, again, these are discussions that were forbidden at home.
The scariest part of it all is that I have struggled with being suicidal for the greater part of my life. I cannot recall exactly when this feeling began, but I remember my first attempt. I was eleven years old. Read that again. Eleven years old and attempting to take my life. I tried swallowing a bottle of airsoft bullets. Obviously, it did not work. And that was my cross to bear.
It was my cross to bear because, once again, we have an issue of stigma. As if the stigma surrounding addiction, mental health, and suicide is not bad enough worldwide, it is far worse in the Deep South. And especially in the church. I recall having a terrible youth pastor at this time. He taught that suicide is an unforgivable sin. Unforgivable because once it is done there is no repenting.
The same pastor caused a lot of unnecessary traumata. Suicide would get me sent straight to hell in a handbasket. I remember the same pastor teaching that drug and alcohol addictions are treatable, but porn addiction is uncurable. And, of course, porn addiction is unforgivable. No matter what vice I allowed to define me, the only residence beyond my grave would be a fiery chamber of torture. And it would take a miracle to save me from it.
“Losing” my Faith
The most important part of my story lies not within the abuse, the attempts, or the addictions. It lies within my recovery. The starkest blow to my life came at the age of eighteen. That May, I had just become an adult. I had just graduated high school with an Associate of Art from my dream college. I had just been hired as a swim coach. I was doing well at my full-time job. I met who I believed to be the woman of my dreams. And yet, that very month, my mother was diagnosed with stage four liver cancer.
From the moment I received the news, I knew I would never be the same. I started drinking more. I stopped eating normally. I lost well over 20 pounds, my hair began to fall out, and no matter what I did, I could not feel normal. At the time, I was a devout Christian. Nothing was more important to me than faith and my involvement with the church. I started my dream program, studying political science, and quickly lost interest.
I was ready to give up on my dreams and accept defeat. I was prepared to make a career out of my grocery store job. I was determined to ditch school completely. But when I informed my sick mother of my intentions, I knew that it would not work. Here lay a woman who had survived it all and now faced an uphill battle against a putrid disease. I could not let her down. She poured 18 years of her life into educating me, and I needed to make that count.
After much thought and prayer, I decided I would stay in school. I began to question how God could let this happen to me. I wondered how God could allow this woman, a saint, to be stricken with such an awful disease. And when I asked my religious leaders about the problem of suffering, I did not receive satisfactory answers. I decided to pursue biblical theology. I already had issues with the global church, despite my devotion to it. Now, it was time to test the waters.
After losing my mother and battling my own diseases and addictions, I reached my conclusion. I found that religion, the thing I held onto through it all, was actually poisoning me. I had been lied to my entire life. Not only was I lied to, but I recognized that millions of people are lied to every week by the church. The church has created far more suffering than it has alleviated. And that, in and of itself, is a problem.
I needed to recuse myself from religion. I needed to rid myself of the poison that flooded my veins for so long. Believe me, I did not want to leave. I did not suddenly have a great “a-ha!” moment and realize religion was toxic. It developed slowly over time, the more I began to understand and interpret the Bible. And now here I am. I am spiritual, not religious. And I pride myself on that.
Now
I have survived abuse. I have survived being bullied. I have survived addiction. I have survived grief and loss. I have survived psychosis. I have survived trauma. I survived suicide. I have survived and lived to tell my story. Now here I am, and I am doing it.
A year ago, at this very moment, my struggles were cumulating into my own devastation. And I believed that no matter what I did, I would never find hope. But the story changed. Not only do I have hope, but I have the will to live. I am living a life I once dreamed about. I do not have everything I ever wanted, but I have found something I could not find at home, at church, or even in swimming: hope.
I wake up each day and serve as a testament to the hope of recovery for others. I get to share my story and touch the lives of others. If you had told me I would be doing this a year ago right now, I would never believe you. But I made it here. And now, I hope you will enjoy it as I delve deeper into my story and psychology. I hope you will understand where I come from when I write critically about the church and organized religion. More importantly, I hope that you will see the hope that I have found.
My life is not over. My light is no longer unseen. And I am only just getting started.