What was happening to my body was bad enough, but what was even worse was what was happening to my mind. My brain was racing all the time, I couldn't think straight, my memory was shot and I became obsessive. Two subjects I became obsessed with: death and God's existence. The first obsession, death I think happened because I was working for a large company in a small town. In the space of a couple of months there had been several deaths- a lot of them from freak accidents- of either the employees or their family members. Nevertheless I became obsessed with death, my mind was weak and unhealthy and with strange illness that was happening, I somehow managed to convince myself that I was next. Yes, I believed that I was foreseeing my own death. I was so convinced of this that I would tell myself, "Wednesday, it's going to happen on Wednesday, by this time next week I won't be alive". I stayed up all night, trying to list every achievement, every good memory telling myself I had had a good life. I called my mother more often just hear her voice, in case I never heard it again.
The second obsession- the question of whether or not God exists was the worst out of everything I was going through. I had become a born- again Christan when I was 12, I had witnessed things which were no doubt miracles, seen people being completely transformed by Jesus, yet I had never really built a relationship of my own with him. This was because of several issues that I won't go into right now. While I was overseas I did began to question certain things about the bible, the rules etc.It
was something that was always in the back of mind. Of course being convinced that I was going to die the question of where I was going afterwards came hand in hand- and I wasn't sure. It seems as though all the scientific evidence supporting God not existing made sense. I fought against it, that fact that after a person dies they just cease to exist was not something that I wanted to believe in and thought of it was frightening.
The greatest stress was that I went to great lengths to hide what was going on with me. I had only arrived in America a few months before and was still getting to know family and new friends I had, still trying to make a good impression. I was so embarrassed about what I was going through- how do you tell someone you are just getting to know that you think you're about to die for no apparent reason. I never realised until much later how good some of the people were around me and that I really had nothing to worry about, some of them were hurt that I hadn't turned to them. All the hiding may have worked at first, but the sicker I got the more the cracks began to show- everyone knew something was wrong but I wasn't telling.
It has taken me nearly all day to write this- well in between fixing my laptop and trying to force myself to study (which is not working). I've just previewed this post and am overwhelmed by how loooong it is. So I have decided to break it up into two parts. I have already started writing the second part and will probably post tonight. This is not easy to write and I need a break!
Cheers until then...
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