I was born in the year 1956. My mother was a housewife and myfather a pharmacist. We lived in the town of Sutton Coldfield. Most of my childhood wasquite uncomplicated and uneventful. I do remember that I felt quite unloved and lonely.This was because I believed nobody could possibly love me because I was fat and ugly. Atschool I was never really very clever but got by. When I was 10 years old my brother Simonwas born. He meant the world to me and I loved him very much. During the years of mysecondary education I worked really hard and achieved good results. I had managed to makemany friends whom I enjoyed spending time with. At the age of 16 I left school and went onto college. There I did a pre-nursing course. Neither of my parents were Christians. Indeed, I felt as if theywere both quite anti. As a child I believed in a God and would often pray. At night I gotinto great bondage about praying for everybody I knew. I believed that if I left anybodyout they would die. It was during my two college years that I met Bob who later on Imarried. After completing my course at college I decided to go and work at myfather’s chemist shop and go to college one day a week to train as a PharmacyTechnician. Bob and I married in 1975. We lived very happily in a new 2bedroom semi-detached house at Tamworth. Bob worked as a Chain maker in a factory inBirmingham. We had many friends and enjoyed a good life, Bob’s mum and dad hadrecently given up their faith as Jehovah’s Witnesses. In Jan 1978 our first child arrived. It was a wonderful baby girlcalled Emma. She was beautiful and we loved her very much. I gave up work to look afterEmma. This I really enjoyed doing. When Emma was about a month old I experienced my firststrange encounter. It was about 2:00 o’clock in the morning when I was awakened byEmma crying. She was in a carrycot next to our bed. I turned to her but was shocked bywhat I saw. Emma was sitting bolt upright her complexion was grey and her eyes wide openand white. I screamed and woke Bob up. However when I looked at Emma again she layperfectly normally in her carrycot. I could offer many explanations for what I had seen,none of which made me feel any more at ease about it. Not long after Emma was born we moved house. This was to athree-bedroom semi in Birmingham. It was there that our second child Michael was born inDecember 1979. What more could we ask for; two lovely children, a pleasant house and eachother. When Michael was a few months old, my life really began to fall apart. I hope by writing an account of what happened to my self over thenext 19 years will help family, friends, and whoever reads it, understand a little moreabout this kind of illness. It is very hard for me to remember a lot of the past, but Iwill do my best to give an account of it. One ordinary morning, after bathing Emma and Michael, I wascleaning out the bath. On turning around to see what they were both doing I found Emmadrinking out of a bottle of cough mixture. Instead of taking it off her, I heard a voicetelling me to let her drink it all. After a minute or so I realized what had happened andpanicked. Emma ended up in our local casualty department where she was given an emetic tomake her sick and admitted into hospital for observation. How could I have allowed that tohappen? I was so upset but never told anyone the truth. Emma fortunately made a quickrecovery. The next incident took place in the kitchen. I was making somesandwiches one evening when again a voice clearly said to me "cut your wrist".It at the time seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do, so I obeyed. I rememberstanding in the kitchen feeling very calm with a large gash on my left wrist. Obviously Ihad to get help for it so I told Bob I had slipped with the knife. It was about this time also that I remember feeling trapped in aworld of lies and deceit. I would make up stories to friends and family about differentthings and would believe them myself. I was very unhappy and felt very depressed. Oneevening I felt driven by some force to drink a bottle of cough mixture myself. Bob,however, was suspicious and got me to tell him what I had done. He was by this time awareof the fact I had problems. After having my stomach pumped and spending a few days inhospital we decided I needed help. My GP referred me to a psychiatrist. While waiting to see a psychiatrist I cut my leg badly. When itwas due to have the stitches removed I cut it again. The voices I heard driving me to dothis made it seem the right thing to do. Also by now I was tormented by a large blackfigure. This never spoke to me but I would hear its clothes rustling and smell a type ofwarmth from it. It would torment me by trying to touch me and watched everything I did.The voices would tell me that if I did not obey them I would harm my children whom I lovedvery much. They seemed to feed on the evil that cutting myself did. They enjoyed the bloodand pain these acts caused me. I began cutting my body where nobody could see and nottelling anyone. Bob however grew wise to this and checked me regularly. I was constantlyat the hospital being stitched up. Sometimes they were nice to me and gave me a localanesthetic, other times they were very off with me and gave me no anesthetic. Finally after another cut the hospital arranged for me to see apsychiatrist because I had become a real danger to myself. This resulted in my beingadmitted to a psychiatric hospital. I was diagnosed as schizophrenic and given medication.After not sleeping for about four nights and hallucinating badly I was givenE.C.T.(electric shock treatment). I hated being in hospital and was very upset at having toleave my children. My parents and Bob’s parents were looking after them. After about3 months I was allowed back home, however nothing much had changed. By now I was reallydepressed and found it very hard to get back into day to day living. Mornings wereespecially hard. Friends I had made in the street where we lived just did not want to knowme any more and I felt very lonely. It was only a matter of days before I was admittedinto hospital again. More E.C.T. was given and large doses of medication; I was also puton injections. Again after about 3 months I was allowed home again. Bob’s job moved to Rugeley so we decided to try and make anew start by moving house. This was hard at first but we managed. After a little whileRichard our third child arrived. Obviously I was off all medication while pregnant.Hopefully all those bad experiences were in the past. There were times when I felt downand would have disturbing thoughts but they did not get out of hand. I made many newfriends in Rugeley and felt we had done the right thing in moving. On the whole I remainedquite well for a couple of years, and enjoyed very much being a mom and a housewife. Onceagain when Richard was only 9 months old I became pregnant again. We moved to anotherhouse in Rugeley, here Vicky was born quite dramatically by an emergency caesarean. Thepregnancy had been awful and I vowed it would mean "no more children". AfterVicky was born I had very bad back pain which lasted about 4 months and ended up by havingtraction as an outpatient. Once this was better, I began working at one of the localplaygroups five mornings a week. This was really enjoyable. My family was all doing well Emma and Michael were both getting onfine at school and Richard and Vicky attended the playgroup with me. Bob was still workingas a chainmaker. It was at this point that a friend named Jan asked me if I would like toattend a meeting and meal free of charge at her church. I said yes. This turned out to bequite a night. The person who was speaking seemed to know all about me and I felt got at.However after she had finished speaking I was introduced to Barbie the wife of the Pastorwho led the church. She discussed a few things with me and I ended up giving my life toGod, it felt good and I was very contented. (Bob also became a Christian shortly after) However it did not last. I began once again to feel verythreatened. This was especially true when I attended church. Everyone seemed so happy andI just felt a threat to them. Barbie was very helpful. It was about now that I also leftworking at the playgroup. Slowly the figure appeared again. It was always present with me.I could not always see it but heard it breathing and moving around. Sometimes I believedit was interfering with my children at night or when at school. I also began cuttingmyself again. More often than not I was in a world of my own. A world full of lies that Ibelieved, and constant torment. I went through deliverance, which appeared to work for awhile. However I feel now that this was because I wanted it to work so much that I made itwork. Obviously I could not keep this up and things gradually got worse and worse. Theonly thing that was different this time was I had many friends from the church that stuckby me, unlike before when they had not wanted anything to do with me. Also aboveeverything I had a relationship with God. Somehow this made it more difficult because Icould not be healed and lead a normal Christian life. I felt I did not live up toeveryone’s expectations of me. To be totally honest I don’t know how we managedas a family. I could not cope with the children and running of a house. Bob’s mum anddad would come and stay sometimes and my mom and dad would sometimes have one of thechildren. Eventually the inevitable happened and I ended up in hospitalagain. The injections started again and I was given more E.C.T. I became really ill andcan’t honestly remember much about it. I do know that I would harm myself given theslightest opportunity. I was over the period of about 6 years admitted into hospitalabout 10 times, I took a couple of overdoses out of sheer desperation. I cannotemphasize enough how much I hated being in hospital away from my family. Various drugs were triedand more often than not I was heavily sedated. It was during these years that Iexperienced another complication: DEPRESSION. This was utterly and totally awful, it wouldcompletely consume me. When I was at home the depression was very hard to cope with. Iwould feel so desperately tired all the time and go about constantly crying. My legs wouldshake uncontrollably and I had a constant "bad" feeling in my body. The onlything I felt like doing was lying in bed. My motivation was non-existent. The main thoughtI had was just to kill myself. Depression is the very worst thing that has ever happenedto me. Sometimes the depression would lift a little and I would manage to catch up on afew jobs. Life seemed very hard and I felt really sorry for Bob my husband and thechildren. I was unable to look after them properly. However, I really thank God for thembecause they were the only thing that kept me going. The depression and schizophrenianever seemed to go completely, it was always there. About this time I began to attend a group for people with mentalhealth problems in Rugeley run by social services. I attended 3 days a week from 10am– 2pm. At the group we did various things like cooking, having speakers, play games,do quizzes, even going out for the day etc. Without these groups I would have had nothing.All the people I used to see seemed to drift away from me, I suppose they were probablyfed up with me. I had 3 friends Di, Megan and Rosalie who tried hard to help me. Oftenwhen things were really bad, I would telephone them. However I could not understand whyGod had stripped me of everyone I had known when I was so desperate. I cannot emphasiseenough how desperate and lonely I felt. The only one to cry out to was God, I would begand plead with him to help me and make me well again; over and over again I would ask himthis. Finally I became so ill that I was put in hospital on a 6-month ‘section’(this is where you are detained by law for up to the specific period, or until they sayyou are well enough to go home again. If that period is not enough it can be renewed againfor the same period on the decision of 2 doctors and a social worker.) I had a nurse withme 24 hrs a day. The voices and figure were my world and everything revolved around them.The top parts of my legs are just covered in cuts. These are scars that are going toremain with me for the rest of my life causing me to be reminded frequently about myillness. When I finally came out of hospital, I had to learn how to rebuild my life, itwas very hard. The group became very important to me and so did God. I was still verydepressed and disturbed, Bob was a tremendous help, I do thank God for him and want tothank him so much for sticking by me. It would have been so much easier for him to havegiven up on me but thank God he didn’t. Why had people deserted me so? I could notunderstand it. I would cry out to God to let the phone ring or the doorbell to ring. Whydid I have to cope with all the housework and daily tasks so alone? All I wanted was afriend. I fully believed they must all have hated me and conspired to abandon me at a timeI needed them more than ever. Then one day something really positive happened, Bob and I hadtaken Vicky to the children’s hospital in Birmingham to have a heart murmur problemseen to. After we left the hospital Bob asked if I would like to go and have a look aroundthe shops. I felt low and could not, however, I said if he wanted to go with Vicky I wouldwait in the car. This was what happened, while I was in the car, I clearly heard God sayto me that I was healed and that from then on I would never go back to being so ill asbefore. Slowly I would get better and better. The road now would be downhill all the way.When Bob came back to the car I told him what had happened, I had always thought that whenGod healed a person it was instant and they felt great from then on. This wasn’t howit was for me. It was to be a process, God told me I would never go back into hospitalagain and praise him I’ve been out now for 15 months. There were really low times butnot as bad as before. I was put on some different tablets which stopped all the voices andfigure activity. The times of depression have very gradually got fewer and less severe andI have begun to enjoy life again. All this I have done with God, he has shown me that whathappens now is an attack of the enemy and with him I can overcome this. I really appreciate life now, I enjoy my family very much and amslowly making up to them all the years of struggling. I enjoy my home very much and am sograteful for it, I notice outside how beautiful God’s creation is: all the differentseasons. It’s really wonderful. Most of all I thank God for how he has blessed myrelationship with Bob, I love him in a way I never thought possible. We are able to dothings together and make plans. I see each day now as a new challenge with God first. Godhas also taught me many things. He has shown me that I can bring good out of my terribleexperiences, by using my insight of illnesses to help others in the same predicament as Iwas, or anyone who may be struggling. He has also shown me that the times I called out tohim in loneliness were the times I grew closer to him. He was there when no one else was.Therefore I have learned to lean on him, the rock, and not man. At the moment the Lord hastold me I am to try and put him first in my life. My family is older now, and are not sodependent on me. To put God first has meant I have had to learn to discipline myself bypraying daily and getting to know the Lord by reading my bible. I feel he is going to useme soon in some way and I am looking forward very much to this. I do hope this account of what I have written will bless manypeople and deepen or challenge them in their walk with God. If anybody reads this whosuffers from schizophrenia or depression, then just know that God will never allow you togo through more than you can cope with, even if it seems very close. With him, there isalways light at the end of that tunnel and he will lead you towards this light. I pray foryou to that he will give you something positive to hang on to. I know too that I will probably be on injections and tablets forthe rest of my life so never feel you shouldn’t take what is prescribed to you –God can work through drugs. God bless you. Sue Mason 1998 VisitorsSince 7th Jun 99 |
