I was born. I was unlike other kids. When I was 8, I learned where babies come from, and I would ask my mom "Where do babies come from?" just to make her squirm and give false answers. By 13, I was building robots and programming personal apps. I was quite a positive person and I spent my time collecting action figures. I was positive sometimes but not always. At age 14, my mom and dad started to argue about raising me, where to live, and what food to eat. The arguments became bitter and I would drowned them out with Linkin Park. In one argument, my mom said some hostile things which can be summed up as, "I do not care for him because he's not a Christian. He's your job." My dad was an atheist and he was good to me. He could also have been an agnostic even though my family considered him a moral man who acted good within a religious family. What I heard from my mom made me bitter. I hated life and started dressing like a punk rocker. I also dressed emo. I hated everything. I withdrew socially a bit, wouldn't even spend time with my grandma anymore. At 17 I was recovering and I got a job. It was a night job and the boss was the biggest bully you had ever seen. I left after 7 months feeling abused. By 17, my mom had gotten mildly more tolerable.
By age 20, I had a bit of an awakening. I found a website where I met two Unitarian Universalist Christians who were well-educated and good at debate. Blessed with wonderful educations. They made a huge impact on my life. Another year went by and on my 21st birthday, I had a strong headache. I think it was 21st but could have been 22nd. Upon the end of the headache, I started experiencing delusions and was diagnosed with Schizophrenia, changing my life. I also suspect I had developed a learning disorder. Keep in mind I wasn't just a genius previously but a beyond-genius. I no longer believe that "beyond genius" is the best term to use. Maybe near-prodigy. Now certain areas of my brain didn't function the best. At age 24 my dad experienced a sudden death which was really a side effect of him not getting regular checkups. My dad kept the family sane with his fair views and strong opinions. With him gone, my family slumped into a further form of 700 club style ideas. I was a Christian at this point, but that didn't make me all that compatible with them. After my dad died, I had my first homo relationship, even though I figured out by age 18 I was bi. At age 25, I dated a woman who was Christian but also more or less into the occult. I had *kind of* gotten into it too. One night we attempted to meet each other in spirit and I'm not sure we did, but some weird stuff that is hard to describe did happen. So this was an online relationship and every night, we would do this well spiritual "thing" that would seem to get us closer, whatever it was.
When me and her met for a first date, she said "Your voice sounds unintelligent." I said "It's due to my Schizophrenia." She said "It's quite unattractive, and too much for me at this time." and she left. By 30 I had realized that I had achieved the impossible: by aiming for the heavens in improving my condition, I became a bit of a functional human being. I consider myself more functional now, but felt I was overoptimistic here in this statement.
The paranormal:
I've had strange, bizarre occurrences in my life. I once had a spirit seem to keep harrassing me until I bought a book on bringing spirits to the beyond. I did a deliverance of sorts and either I gained peace on the matter or the spirit did, because it was no more. Upon doing so, I asked my mom, "I'm crazy, aren't I?" She said "Maybe not. I have a confession to make. As a kid, I was into the occult. I got into it after we lived in an old house a year after a murder took place . And I may have opened a door or two." My mom was into witchcraft. I'm thinking, "WHAT?" Later on my grandma told me, "Your mom is a Christian now who keeps you on a leash and protects you, I know. But as a kid, she was wild."
Now the worst part of it all? My mom wanted to hide all of this from me, but had to tell me as soon as I experienced weird things happen. So here I was. A person with a connection to the spirit world.
And this spirit connection and the stress of my job at the time, even though I liked the job, caused me to start overdosing on caffeine. By the time I had like X amount of caffeine always swimming through my bloodstream, I was seeing ghosts, demons, angels. And things were becoming cartoon like. So I had a breakdown, a soft, gentle one but one where I was delusional. It was actually more a moderate breakdown. The headache at age 21. Diagnosis with Schizophrenia. Learning disorder.
At age 28 when being mentally reviewed by someone, I found out I could memorize and recite the value of pi to a pretty insane level, yet I couldn't remember what I ate the day before for breakfast. I could solve some high level math, yet not tie a specific knot that was of an intermediate skill level. This was at a psychologist that wanted to do a thorough job of testing me. There were reasons why. This was after my crash.
Other notes: The label on my illness has changed a few times. Also, I'm doing better these days. They now think that my condition might be temporary and improving, but that I could still have to be on medicine the rest of my life because the risk of things getting worse and jeopardizing my health is just too great to play around with it.
