Tag: Hope

I wanted to let you know that I’ve been gaining some perspective tonight. Just reading a lot about what has been going on in the world (I’ve been up all night doing what I can to take my mind off of everything because those destructive thoughts start to take a life of their own) by perusing news sites, blogs, etc. and I’ve applied some logic to my uncontrollable emotions. The truth is that I DO have a good life. And no matter how bad I feel internally because of these thoughts or any external thing that may trigger them, my life will never be something to complain about. I’ve been reading very sad stories about the injustices that occur around the world everyday (a big part of the reason why I became interested in practicing law) and my disease does not even begin to describe pain, despair, loneliness or hopelessness. I’m not downplaying it because pretending that I don’t have those feelings won’t help me learn how to cope with them and learn how to live my life without wanting to end it, but reading about what people endure empowers me. Thinking about what you have endured in your life, daddy, and especially Faye as she has made great strides against all odds and people I don’t even know who are younger than me or more vulnerable than me or victimized their entire lives–people who know nothing but how to survive in the worst of conditions–fill me with hope.

There are still a lot of things that I have not confronted that I am dealing with in pieces as I gain the strength to do so–things that Jim has advised me to let out and if possible, share with someone I can trust. He says, “no one can help you if they don’t know what is happening or happened to you.” I asked him, “why can’t I just start being happy? why do I have to re-live the pain?” And he told me that because it took years for my psychological disease to break me down, I won’t actually be healing if I don’t undo the damage by slowly building myself back up. Ever since you held my hand at the hospital when you took me in after leaving Savannah to come help me, I stopped thinking that I can’t trust you no matter how my thoughts may try to distort your support.

I feel scared about letting people in because I have held on to so much contempt and rage about people who I felt abandoned me when I left NY. I felt like I had an entire network of support that fell away, from people who I could care less about to people like Tom who I cared everything about. When I was in NY and asked for help with what was going on in my ward and the problems I had with my spirituality as a result (which I now understand to have been within the context of this disease), I felt upset and hurt and lost when he never called me back. He said, “do visiting teaching” in the one conversation we had. Before I left for NY, daddy would call me a “star,” dubbing that as my nickname before I let him down when I came home. Stanford, who I was particularly close with before he moved, expressed his disappointment with a disdain that I still think about all the time. Dawn, who wanted to help and support me the best way she knew how and was my closest sibling out of everyone often scolded me about what I would do turn myself around when I didn’t even have the clarity to understand what was happening. And despite the many loving gestures she made, I could only interpret constructive criticism an an attack. My teachers in NY stopped responding to me, Don at Curtis didn’t get recommendations from Chris or Duncan, and my teacher who was a supporter, nurturer, mentor and guidance counselor for me as well as a close friend refused to even talk to me about what happened and completely ignored me altogether–something that I hope to soon confront and find forgiveness and strength in my heart to move past.

But more important than the people in my life I felt as though Heavenly Father abandoned me. When I got up to NY with the gospel burning bright inside of me, I thought that nothing I had done to build my spirituality and trust in Him was helping me persevere. Everyone at school knew who I was, what I stood for, and got to the point where they completely stopped trying to test my standards because they knew I stood firm. Boys learned that I would not compromise my standards for their pleasure and they all almost stopped trying to get to know me or date me altogether. I had very few friends who stood by me and for me when I chose to uphold my standards, and even fewer who could spend time with me knowing that I wouldn’t smoke, drink, go to an inappropriate venue, hang out with or around negative influences, or compromise my spirituality and the Spirit inside of me in any way. I became alone and isolated because I had a difficult time adjusting to the Manhattan 9th ward. I felt disconnected as a black woman, unattractive to white mormon men and unable to relate to white mormon women and dissatisfied with settling for whatever else would accept me. So I felt isolated spending most of my time in the practice rooms alone, something that worked for me in high school, but haunted me in NY, left to these symptoms that began to poison my mind and body. One Friday night–the weekends were particularly lonely because everyone liked to go out and do all those things I wouldn’t partake in–I’m in a practice room with my Book of Mormon because I desperately wanted to feel fulfilled and loved by my Savior. With the ardent faith that He was all I needed to achieve joy, I knelt down and prayed with Moroni 10 in mind, finally asking for the first time in my life if everything that I had been taught was true. And I was answered. My tongue felt bound and my body felt stiff. I could not move or speak and I didn’t want to, knowing that being still would allow me to feel or hear the answer. All I could do was cry uncontrollably. By that time, I was use to crying alone in the practice room, but I knew this wasn’t one of those nights. I knew that what I was feeling was not the hopelessness and despair that had caused streams of tears to drip down my heart. It was the Spirit that I had grown to know over years and years of attending church and being surrounded by spiritual beauty. I knew in that moment that there is a God who loves me and who would comfort my conflicted soul. Mommy, I went the next three days without eating or drinking a single thing and at no point did I hunger and at no point did I thirst. I never even felt an inkling of needing food or water. I understood what it meant to never hunger or thirst after drinking from the everlasting life of the Savior. For those three days, I kept the Book of Mormon with me because I wanted to read it and have its presence and power in my life. I wanted the Spirit to be with me at all times. My prayer brought to me so much joy that I couldn’t contain it and I wanted to escape the misery that started to take over me. That Sunday after church, I sat down and wrote a letter to all of my siblings testifying of my belief in Heavenly Father and the unparalleled joy that it impressed upon my tortured soul. I never sent that letter although I still have it. Because that day after church, I took a bite out of a chocolate chip cookie that did not immediately diminish my joy, but seemed to somehow slowly fade it away as I began to hunger and thirst once again. For those three days, this Spirit, this knowledge, this joy interrupted and eliminated my pain. So not knowing what was happening to me, I grew angry; angry that I had lived my life to reach those fleeting moments of truth, angry that I had devoted my life to my Heavenly Father with complete faith and trust in Him, with a desire to serve Him, be a representation of Him, to keep His commandments, and live with Him once again only to be miserable while everyone else looked happy. I didn’t understand why I got to the point where I could not live my life and do what I thought I was meant to do, developing the talents that He had given me in His name with every intention to use it as a tool of His great and marvelous plan.

While going to the YSA Ward after breaking up with BP, I met repeatedly with the Bishop, telling him that I had not kept the Word of Wisdom, the Law of Chastity, that I had not taken the Sacrament in almost fours years ever since I smoked marijuana for the first time during my last semester in NY, that I wanted to repent, but I didn’t know how, and that I needed help because I feared that if the Lord could not save me, I could never be saved; that I had started contemplating suicide almost four years prior and while before it was one of many depressing thoughts, I was finally starting to devise a specific and hopefully effective plan. And mommy, when the Bishop talked at me (not to me) and said that I was unhappy because of the commandments and promises that I had broken, because of the decisions that I had been making, and that I was inflicting my own pain upon me by the way I was living, I wanted to walk away from church and never go back. When I tried to explain that I felt happy, spiritual, ecstatic, connected, overjoyed, devout, determined, inspired, supported, loved, and motivated when I first arrived in NY and that I grew miserable years before I blatantly committed a treacherous sin that would change my life and how I was living it for years, I felt even more confused than before I met with the Bishop. So upon beginning the process of repentance, my emotions discovered the ultimate way to control my body. With the guilt that wracked my soul for committing what I felt were among the most horrific sins against God, I could no longer come up for air. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t feel, I couldn’t understand, I couldn’t believe, I couldn’t love, I couldn’t be. It felt as though everything that had amounted to that period in time, the years of suppressed guilt and rage and contempt and misery and loneliness and surrender took over me and would not let me go. I didn’t feel like Donna and I hadn’t in four years, but at this point, I didn’t even feel human. There was a demon inside of me, that had become me, that spent years struggling to take over my body and finally won.

So when I broke up with BP and lost my only coping mechanism, I fell apart. So much of what I have learned about Bipolar II Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder and Dependent Personality Disorder has released my body from captivity and taken power away from my demons. My mental awareness provided me with a platform to begin understanding that I am not what those demons tell me that I am, that I don’t have to forever feel the pain that they inflict, that my dreams, my soul, my emotions, my spirit, my body, my virtue, and my worth can be mine again, that I am not this distorted enemy to myself, but that I am myself: Donna Lee. I can love myself, I can feel myself, I can enjoy myself, I can be proud of myself, I can TRUST myself, I can believe in myself, and I can BE myself.

Repentance is not something I take lightly, nor for granted. When I went to the Bishop to beg for mercy, I wanted it with every fiber in my being–but that fiber wasn’t what you and daddy nurtured and cultivated within me, and my ravaged being wanted to use it to destroy me, not save me. I will one day be able to face the sin I have committed, kneel before God and beg for mercy with Godly sorrow and pure intent. One day, that process will cleanse and refresh my soul, leaving me as spotless as I was the day I was baptized, but mommy, I know that sorrow will only take over my mind and thoughts and emotions if I’m not strong enough.

God blessed me with this body, and this soul. I’m releasing the anger and resentment that has filled my heart with contempt for a God that would create me this way. I am embracing the shades of beauty that it has created within me to conquer the evil and use it for good. But I just beg you, mommy, please, please, please know that I can be better than what I have become, that I will make you proud once again and that I cannot fight this battle without you. I can’t disappoint again because I don’t know if I can handle the backlash, I don’t know if I can handle another night that has turned into morning like this one and continue to grow strong and make progress if someone else walks away from me.