When I was about five years old, my mom was just caring for me like every loving
mother does. She was going to a doctor's appointment and decided to take me with her. My mom has told me several
times before that I threw a temper tantrum in front of everyone in the doctor's office. I started to cry and my mom
picked me up. When her doctor saw me and asked what had happeneded, my mom told her that I had thrown a fit.
Sometime before that that I had ripped a book in half because of some sort of anger that was inside of me as a child.
My mom's docter had taken one look at me and said something like, "Kathy, your son has the apparent depressed look of
a forty year old man on his face." I think my mom told her that I was just one of those toddlers that seemed to
have fits of rage in early life. I don't remember what happened after that, but I have been told that sometime later
I was put on my first dose of anti-depressants.
Many different combinations of medicine were thought to be able to calm my bouts
of serious frustration and sadness. My mom has told me that I was almost never happy when I was a child. She told
me that she used to cry because no matter what she did, she couldn't make me happy.
When I was 11 years old I felt that there was something in my life that was missing.
Before that, I would sometimes sit in church and just watch as my parents got to partake of the Lord's Supper. I had
never thought of being baptized just to have what my parents had in church. Although I was young, I knew better than
to get baptized just to be like the crowd. I didn't know, however, that the people in my church would somehow be unbelievably
happy when someone that they loved would become healthy after being sick for a long, long time. They said that
"The Great Healer" was responsible for what happened to their relatives. I started to believe that something was up,
because so much stuff kept happening. Could this "Great Healer" heal me? Who is the "Great Healer". I later
found out that the answer to all my questions was Jesus, and into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit, I was baptized.
I kept going to the docter for many different sorts of medication. The medication
started taking effect. Everyone was happy to see that something was happening to me, but little did they know that the
effect was disastrous.
All throughout my life, I had done excellent in school. When I was 12 and
in the sixth grade, things unimaginable started to happen. I would lie to the teachers about having my schoolwork done and
get rewards just for saying that it was completed. Teachers seemed to really trust me. I guess it's because they
trusted my older brother who was a really good student. As time passed, trust diminished. I started getting in
deep trouble for lying, and kids started making fun of me. They said that I was a bug eater just because I told
them, in the fifth grade, that grasshoppers were full of protein. I became very gullible because kids thought they could
manipulate me into doing something stupid. Of course that's just common prepubescent behavior. I'm pretty
sure that kids still do that today. I went to see the docter at least once a month and was given a "new and improved"
medication. By now I was taking at least ten tablets a day.
I was 13 years old and going into the seventh grade. My life went downhill
from there and finally, after years of waiting for some sort of impossible result, my parents and doctor decided
to seek medical help. A little before Christmas of my seventh grade year I was taken out of school and sent
to River Park Hospital in downtown Huntington, West Virginia. The whole idea of going there was to learn how to cope
with my anger, because they thought that there was no way that I was going to get out of what I was in. I stayed over
Christmas and learned a lot about coping. I returned to school after the holidays and was doing absolutely great.
Then, somehow, my anger management began to fail entirely. I started throwing things at school. I started to use
foul language because I wanted to fit in. No one ever seemed to care about me.
By the end of that year, I had just barely passed. My mom and dad had decided
to put me into a Christ-centered education. They withdrew me from public school and had me tested for placement the
following Fall Season. I went and took the test at Covenant School and I was told that I would have to repeat the seventh
grade. That made me furious, because I wanted to follow in the steps of my older brother. I went ahead and decided
to go with the flow. Everything was cool, I suppose. I don't understand what happened to me, but I was the
worst that I had ever been. My body chemistry was even being thrown off... I gradually had become obese because of my
laziness and my metabolism was extremely slow. One day, during New Testament class, I was reminded of the time that
I was baptized and I became sorry for myself. After all that time, I never called upon God for help.
By Thanksgiving, I was withdrawn from Covenant to go back to River Park Hospital. Because of the school's
regulations of disciplinary removal, I was not allowed to go back until the following year. I guess my doctor thought
that I would do better this time, but that's not what happened.
I had gone yet again because I felt that life wasn't worth living and I had a few
suicide attempts. Sometimes I would get so angry at my family for something I did that I would run away from home.
During my stay at River Park, I learned about drugs and everything, but I didn't want to even try them... nothing like that
could even begin to help me overcome my condition. Also, I learned that I was dealing with a case of severe
depression, but the problem was that the doctors couldn't figure out why. Later on, I was asked for an honest answer,
"Would you like to get some short-term or long-term help?" I thought for a moment and decided to choose what would be
the best for me... long term help. I was released from River Park and My mom started home-schooling me. That didn't
go well in the least bit... I got too comfortable being at my own home. In February, we got a call from the long-term
help facility... they had an opening for me. On the 13th of February, My mom made a 300 mile journey north
through West Virginia to St. Clairsville, Ohio, which is only a about an hour from Wheeling.
