Marilyn
Faith Keeps Me Going

I remember my parents ganging up on me and beating me, as far back as when I was three years old.  As a child, I told my mother frequently that I had a headache or a stomachache and didn’t want to go to school.  Throughout childhood and into nursing school, people called me a hypochondriac.  I insisted I really was sick.

As far as I know, I had temper tantrums from an early age. By the time I was 16, I was threatening to leave home if my parents didn’t treat me right.  I tried to run away but was soon brought back by the highway patrol and punished. After that, my father only yelled at me.

Just before entering nursing school, I lost my mother due to her “lack of will to live,” secondary to cancer. She had had cancer since I was 13, and toward the end, she developed severe back pain.  The operation to relieve her pain caused her to be paralyzed from the waist down.  She was so devastated by this, she told my father and I that she couldn’t live that way and be a burden on both of us. She was so worried and depressed that she stopped eating, drinking, taking medications and I.V. fluids, and died.  She was 40 years old. I felt rejected and abandoned, and took her death very personally.  A couple of days after her death, I tried to overdose on her cancer pills and ended up in the local hospital psychiatric ward.  The year was 1958,

After my hospitalization, our family doctor told me that my mother had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression, and she had me because a psychiatrist told her that having a child would make her happier.  That news dropped like a lead balloon in my lap.  I felt that I had failed to make both her and my father happy.  Today, I’ve found faith and I know that I am here for a reason.

My mother may have been misdiagnosed and actually suffering from bipolar disorder.  I suspect my father may have also had the illness. Both parents had terrible tempers.

My father developed severe depression when he was 67 years old.  After six weeks of intensive psychiatric treatment and ECT, he committed suicide.  Again, I felt abandoned and rejected by the only person I had left in my life.

I had years of psychiatric treatment, and was given almost every diagnosis imaginable.  In the last nine or ten years, psychiatrists have told me I have all the symptoms of bipolar disorder. I told them I had always experienced more lows than highs.  It has been a debilitating disease, because one minute I would be on top of the world, and the next minute, I would be crying and depressed, not able to do anything for myself or anyone else.  With every failure or rejection in my life, I tried overdosing on prescription or over-the-counter pills.  Right after my father’s death, I cut myself all over my arms and legs.  Once, I was on an experimental medication and became so anxious I set myself on fire, suffering third degree burns.  I was in and out of psychiatric units and hospitals, county and state hospitals and homes.

It is a miracle that I was able to carry out a fairly normal career as a Registered Nurse for 30 years, and that I am now a published writer, never dreaming I could be a writer at all.  It’s only by the grace of God that I’m here today and able to do any of these things.

I have had all of the symptoms: excessive irritability, aggressive behavior, a temper that still gets me into trouble, racing speech, racing thoughts, and flights of ideas that made me switch topics ten or more times in one conversation.  I have been impulsive and had very poor judgment.  I’ve had crying spells and prolonged sadness.  I eat more and sleep more.  I still get angry very easily and worry about things that I should leave up to God.  I get tired and exhausted.  I have a hard time making decisions, and sometimes I feel like I should just give up.  Today my faith in God keeps me going on a daily basis, and out of the hospital the majority of the time.  I know that God restores me – takes my pain and sorrow and sickness and makes me stronger.

My psychiatrist doesn’t understand exactly what I am going through, that God will make a way for me where man cannot.  God knows exactly what I am going through and will help me endure and overcome it.