No one taught me what to do next because there was no next. That was supposed to be life. It was supposed to save my life. Instead, it nearly buried me.
When I speak of hearing voices, I speak of a few events only. The voice that said, "Save yourself," I experienced in 2005. At that point, my religion had taught me that I would find personal fulfillment and eternal salvation by helping others. Charity was one of the traits that defined a pure, virtuous person going to the Celestial Kingdom, or highest heaven. If we did what the Church told us, we would learn charity and sacrifice. Apparently, sacrifice was often taught, along with strict obedience to Mormon leaders.
There were only a few very, very big problems with this line of thinking. First of all, the service projects that I participated in while inside the LDS Church were not service projects of my own choosing. Often, a whole bunch of people would come to work on a project for a few hours, often on a Saturday. Then we would go home and have nothing to do with the project again. We never, as individuals, chose what we would like to do to serve someone. The Church, however, would often recommend projects that were in its interest. Or a compassionate service leader would suggest a project. It seemed that a lot of pure, personal service was diluted by ordered or recommended service. And often, lots of people would be in on one project, contributing miniscule amounts of labor to a large scheme. Again, the notion of individually chosen projects that did not rely on the Church often failed or wilted. There simply wasn't time to do anything outside of the Church's program. As a result, I often felt disconnected from the goodness of service. I did not like it.
Second, I was in massive trouble in my own life. I continued to try to attend church meetings, only to realize that I could not stand them much at all. If I actually made it to church one Sunday, I could end up feeling worse afterward. I often did not even notice this. Also, I was going more and more insane. I got delusional and thought a number of crazy things. I began to limit my activities based on "answers" to prayers that were often paranoid and illogical. I was going insane. And after I heard the voice telling me to save myself, I really literal got more and more in need of some literal kind of saving. I was getting less and less healthy. And my addiction to a prescription drug was starting to waste away my mind and body. I had symptoms of schizophrenia and autism that started to appear out of nowhere. I had super-sensititve hearing and overall muscle weakness. I didn't eat enough food. I had an eating disorder and often thought about losing weight. I was often depressed. When I tried to exercise, it would only deplete me. And I had symptoms indicating that I was developing diabetes. I had some very scary episodes of high and low blood sugar. Some of this was caused by undertreatment of mental and physical issues. Some of it was caused by the prescription drug to which I was addicted.
So far, the LDS Church had not saved me one whit. And I was going to go do something for someone through that church? Was I insane? At this point, I know that I was under a very strong illusion that refused to fade due to years of religious brainwashing. But I was being shown, by the whole Universe (I am sure this includes God) that I was destroying myself. How could I offer help to others in my insanity and ill-health? How could I serve the monster sapping me of my life force? It was beginning to be blasphemous to all of reality. I was being socked in the jaw by reality, and I could not even stop to acknowledge it. Though when I heard the voice saying two simple words--"Save yourself," I had to start thinking. What was it that I was supposed to do to help myself? For the first time, helping myself started to seem bigger than the LDS Church. For the first time, sense started to break through. I was being shown the higher way out of my mess. I didn't realize it was the higher way, but I began to act as if it had more importance than any institution. Even though I ran into lots and lots of bad advice, I began to learn how to sift through it. I started to learn to recognize the real Truth, not the truth taught to me as LDS dogma.
Despite the fact that I started acting like I wanted to help myself, I deteriorated further and further into insane delusions, and probably began hallucinating at a point that I didn't even realize. I ended up in the hospital the next year, where I got the medication that I continue to take to this day. One of the nurses said that the schizophrenic symptoms I had came on in an unusually late onset. It was not that common for such symptoms to show up in a person's 30's. At this point, I agree and disagree. I do think that persons showing mild signs of delusions can get worse and worse through life and go crazy at a later age. I also think that the way I was living my life could only make me insane. I did, I realized later, show slight signs of being delusional. And yes, my life had driven me crazy. No one in the mental health system gave me proper diagnosis and treatment. In fact, some of the mental health practitioners showed a desire to destroy me rather then make me more healthy. And the LDS Church did not help at all. As I got more and more isolated, the LDS Church did me less and less good. I now understand that bad religions only make their followers completely insane.
It is okay to be a little unrealistic with kooky ideas. But I far surpassed this state in 2006. I really, truly became insane on a level I had never associated with my personality. I knew myself as unrealistic, but also as possessing a kind of common sense. But for a while, the common sense I possessed completely disappeared. It didn't appear again until the year 2007. For, even while I had a good medication to treat my symptoms, it took a while for my symptoms to go down enough that I wasn't constantly battling delusions.
Again, a big pseudo THANKS A LOT.
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