A Childs First Memory: A Story of Child Abuse, Anxiety, Depression and Drug Abuse

A Childs First Memory

It was a late summer night back in 1986. A woman was standing up the alley from her boyfriend's parents house clutching her 4 year old son crying. She and her violent drunk boyfriend wer fighting and she decided to leave the situation.

As they were waiting at the next road up from the alley, the boy peering over her shoulder noticed a man walking up the alley. The boy cried, "mommy mommy he's coming to get us." She looked and said "I think it's your uncle coming to check on us to see if were ok." It was not his uncle. By the time she realized it was the boys father, it was too late. He ran up on her, punched her in the face and both the boy and mother fell to the ground. They started screaming for help as the boys father ran off.

The lady that lived on the corner heard the screaming, came outside and helped them into her house and called the police.

That little boy was me and that is the story of my first memory as a child.

As Time Went On

My mother stayed with my father after that hoping things would change. They didnt. He made promise after promise each time he got drunk and violent. Both me and my mother were physically and verbally abused throughout my childhood.

My early childhood was filled with constant fear. I was  socially awkward in school. I was bullied and even jumped at age 16 by 22 kids after school one day.

Mental Health Problems Began

As you can imagine this all developed into severe panic disorder, social phobia, depression, as well as becoming a drug addict and making some poor life choices. This lasted until age 30 when I had finally had enough. This was not who I wanted to be.

Over the years I seen various counselors and been on multiple medications which only seemed to make the problem worse. I just knew there had to be something, anything I could do besides using drugs to escape, taking medications that made me worse, and talking to counselors who I felt didn't understand me. Something had to give. I decided I was going to figure out how to fix myself and I wouldn't quit until I succeeded.

Education and the Path to Healing

First I started by studying all about anxiety and depression. While I did learn some valuable exercises that helped to a point, it was only a minor improvement. Studying about these things only seemed to reinforce the idea that I was stuck this way and couldn't change.

Then I started studying psychology. Immediately I was bombarded with statistics and information that made me feel like all the cards were stacked against me in regards to changing.

Then through some more research I found out some things about the mind that I thought may be beneficial to me.

I learned with lots of persistence and internal work in combination with exposing myself to repetitive positive information while also avoiding exposing myself to negative influences, I could slowly start to change my thought patterns which would eventually change the way I think. After about 9 months of persistent exercise, It was like a putting a brand new light bulb in a lamp that I thought was broken. Finally, I was able to experience light in a room that was dark for so many years.


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