Posted by:
Sketchlines
(
)
Date: January 02, 2013 01:46PM
This topic actually strikes a few different chords in me, and the sound isn't harmonious, though some of the individual notes are beautiful when singled out. Twisted....yes maybe. But I think it is more complicated than a Cinderella+evil step-mother story. My parents were devastated when I was sent home for my health reasons in 2003 (or was it 2004?...the years are already blending together), but they were also eager--desperate even--tO help me. We didn't know what the problem with me was; neither I nor they had wanted me to come home, I was fully converted at the time, and wanted with all the passionate excitement of a very young person to serve god and do my very best for him. I smile when I look back on that person, with amusement and that weird affection that you sometimes find when you look back on a part of your past that you have finally come to terms with. When I went on my mission I was an energeic, muscular, perpetually smiling immortal man that knew all the answers in the universe worth asking; when I came home, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I was devastated, and felt like that spark I had was suddenly gone forever. It was like death, perhaps. Eventually, after the initial shock of it all, came the real challenge and despair. Over 4 years I was given an army of physically harmful anti-depressants and mood stabilizers which, in combination with my now sedentary vegetative and hoplessly depressed state of mind, my weight from 210 pounds to 327 in little more than a year. After the meds didnt work we cautiously resorted to the controversial ECT (electroconvulsive) therapy, which involved electrocution to induce seizures, presumably to help cure mental illness (did this 36 times between 2007-2008, whih resulted primarily in heavy memory loss). By that point I was on disability, completely without hope, living in a waking coma. In addition, my family, which had been financially comfortable for my entire life to that point was now facing the worries after losing most of their savings. I think it's possible that I received less judgement from my ward for coming home and no longer attending church because I invoked such pity from them that backbiting me would have seemed to shameful. Regardless, I was still an outcast, still damaged goods, still a failure. How small a thing it seems now, but back then it was a prison and was all I knew. In 2008 I decided enough is enough; I did not believe I was depressed or bipolar or crazy, and I was finished destroying myself. Between 2008 and 2009 I lost 100 pounds, got back into school and had a relationship. I was still heavily conflicted about the church, and about my family's support for it. Today they think of me as a Laman or Lemuel or something. They are heartbroken, and evn now look at me as 'the son who failed his life's most important task,' because I no longer--CAN no longer--believe. I am a good student at UVU, I am set to graduate in about a year, and it looks like I have promising potential as an artist in the video game/ movie industry (I'd like to work as a digital artist for Pixar eventually, but we'll see).
My point is, yeah--my family's. Elite make it impossible for me to connect with them the way we could, leaving a constant chord of sadness in that direction, but we still love each other and are trying to find common ground. The real point is that it's complicated....after everything we've been through together I can't just dispassionately write them off as simply "twisted" people and discard them. The jigsaw puzzle has more pieces than that.
To the initial poster: I feel for ya man, you aren't alone. Don't turn to bitterness! I learned that te hard way, and have paid heavily for it. There's always hope, and the act of rationally seeking and recognizing it is a skill worth developing! You aren't alone :)
(there are probably a ton of typos, but I'm doing his from a diner on my iPhone, so....deal with it lol