D-Rock's Blog

Well…. If your going to read this then please read all of it or just don’t bother. It’s very personal to me and it took me 3 years before I decided to chomp down and sit out and write about it. Anyways if you would like to talk to me about it more I’m down so call me or facebook me or coffee me. welp. here ya go. sorry about the length but i could have made it longer.

I don’t quite know how to tell my story and for that matter whether or not it’s even one worth telling. Truly though I believe it is worth telling and that is why I’m up at 5 a.m. on a sleepless night typing away.

Adversity faces everyone at some point in his or her lives. It is inevitable like a bad storm that at one point in your life something will arise, and it will hit you like a semi crushing a 1988 ford escort that you will face adversity.

My story of adversity is one of quite internal struggle that almost destroyed me.

Entering my sophomore year of college was exciting. My first semester of college I had no clue what made a great collegiate student. I didn’t realize that attending class was more important than playing Mario Kart in my buddy Tyler’s dorm room. I thought when teachers said I strongly recommend you do this they were recommending it not that strongly recommend was another word for required. Anyways, the reason my sophomore year, had me full of excitement and joy was that it was my chance to right all my wrongs of my freshman year. Second semester of my freshman year I quit my job of 35+ hours a week and ended up turning my gpa around, while maintaining to run a ministry for middle schoolers.

Back on track, literally and figuratively, my sophomore year of college was very exciting. I was ready to grab the world by it horns and drive it to the ground. Things were going well at the beginning. The ministry that I was running had around 150 kids in attendance every week and I was thriving socially, my grades were also doing well besides my stats course which I ended up taking it 4 times (talk about adversity.)

The only burden causing angst in my life was fundraising. For the ministry that I was running I was required to raise $1,000 dollars a month and if was unable to do so then I didn’t get paid. I was 19 years old, I’m 23 now and have no clue how to ask people for money when I’m struggling, it’s just an awkward thing to do and I’m a pastors kid so of course all the people I would ask for money were always getting hit up anyways. Ok, so what did I do about it I started selling cocaine, no dummy, I became obsessed with it. Not In a good way though. My mind was consumed with different ways I could raise money, I began to skip meals because I could not afford them, and my whole life was just out of whack.

I remember sitting across the table at HuHot from my roommates Drew and Trey and I literally did not say a single word and they kept on looking at me like “What’s wrong” or “Are you ok?” All I could think about was ways that I could raise money and I would play out this conversations with wealthy business men that I knew and would wine and dine them and tell them all the great things I was doing for these kids and then would end it with “Do you want to hop on board on the ministry train or boat.” (you can laugh)

I was so consumed with it that I became delusional. My roommate Drew, his father was my boss the previous year and I started to make up all these conspiracies in my head about how they were out to get me and thought that they were just the shadiest family in the world. Even though none of the stuff I was contriving in my head was truth.

Back track a little. Two weeks before my freshman year of college my family moved to Florida so that my father could start a church. I was stranded in the lone island of Nebraska but actually I was stranded there with my older sister Somer.

The night before thanksgiving of 2006 I drove over to the house that my sister was living at. Driving there was a wreck though. I literally had been to the house she was living at least 75 times. But, for some reason when I began to drive there I would just be so caught up in my mind that I was incapable of even remembering where I was going. The night before I went to the grocery store with my good friend Juan and I could not even remember why I was there and I would just walk around and he would have to help me as I walked around. That night was the day before Thanksgiving and I could not sleep at all I sat in the office where the ministry I lead was and thought for 3 hours before going to club. Club= what the ministry I lead in the mornings at the middle school I worked at was called.

Finally I arrived at her house and I was just a wreck. The family that she was living at was playing simple board games and so I tried to play. Again all I could think about was taking wealthy businessmen out to try and get them to give me their money for ministry purposes. Later, that night the family she was living with sat me down and said, “What do you want from us?” I remember thinking that night they were mad at me because I had ruined their family game night but they were just concerned. I told them I was extremely stressed and that I did not know what to do. Their daughter Lauren took her tithe money (she tithes to people in need) and bought me a plane flight to see my family in Florida for the next day.

I cried a lot that night. I slept about 7 hours but I woke up and my mind was racing and it felt like I hadn’t got a single moments rest and it had felt like this for about 3 or 4 weeks. When I woke up I was incapable of doing anything. My sister had to tell me to put my shoes on brush my teeth. It was all good though, right; I mean I’m going to Florida to see my family. Wrong, that morning I was at the top of their stairs lying under their kitchen table and Cindy the mother asked me if I was sick and divulged that she had pneumonia when she was in college and it really messed her up.

So instead of getting out of there maroon Dodge Caravan to go to Florida, we went to Bryan LGH west so that I could spend some time in their mental health unit. I remember being so confused. I had no clue what was going on. I remember the nurse counting my clothes and I started crying and I told her “Your trying to make me homeless” (I was obsessed with the fact that I was going to be homeless as well.) Me checking in was hard for everyone involved, especially my sister, she dealt with feelings of guilt for a long time afterwards, and I did resent her a little bit but it was inevitable like a storm.

What ensued was just strange. The first day that I was in there I thought it was all part of a big plan. I thought Campus Life the organization I was working for had worked it out with the hospital and at the end of the day they were going to say “Surprise. You no longer have to deal with raising support anymore, we’ve got enough money for you to not have to worry about it anymore.” So I went around the hospital and began to witness to everyone in it. I distinctly remember an older male nurse saying as I was laying on the ground witnessing, “Oh great, we’ve got one of these!”

Some of it now looking back on it is humorous. But, it was the scariest time in my life. All I wanted was the comfort of my father. My heavenly father and more importantly at that time my actual biological father. I refused to take the drug test even though I was clean as a whistle because I was afraid they were going to pin something on me, and I had all of these irrational ideas about insurance. That being said my sister on Thanksgiving Day told me that my dad had bought a plane flight and he was going to be there the following day. For some reason it was unphathomable to me that he was actually going to come, I did not believe her. Sure enough though the next day he came.

My life was a freaking mess, and I had no clue what was going on and why I was where I was but having him there just made me feels like everything was going to be ok. He told me to take the drug test because I had to in order to get out, so of course I did and sure enough I hadn’t been drugged or done any by choice. I was however severely dehydrated. The next few days were rough of course. The huskers had one though so all I would do was watch ESPN highlights with my roommate Joel who had overdosed on methadone pills in front of Walgreen’s that morning.

My dad would bring me Chipotle burritos everyday. God I must have eaten 10 in the 5 days that I was in there. They had me super drugged up when I was in there. I was already in a mind stupor and then they would give me so many Risperdol pills at such a high dosage that I was catatonic. I remember a family coming in to visit me and I couldn’t say a word because my jaw was locked up so weird and they told my dad “He doesn’t seem that bad” I remember thinking in my head are you serious I couldn’t even mutter a word.

Anyways time flew. I had good friends come and visit me and I would walk around with deodorant in my sock as some sort of coping mechanism and it helped and I just spent that time going to group therapy and doing whatever the hell I could to get out. Eventually they did let me out after I convinced them I was somewhat fine and that I was going to move to Florida with my family. Sounds great right.

So when I got out we unenrolled me from UNL and my pops and I made the trek down to sunny St. Augustine Florida. I remember rolling up to our house and I was greeted by my little sister Mandy and my mom and I just started crying and said I just can’t stop thinking. My mind was racing at a million miles per hour all the time. I don’t even remember most of what was going through it but I remember it felt like there were molecules just bouncing around like when water turns to vapor just shooting a million miles per hour.

Moving to Florida was the hardest time of my life. I moved away from all that I had known for the last decade of my life. I would spend most of my time with my little sister. They had me on an extremely high dosage of Risperdol and I was pretty much a walking zombie. I gained 30 pounds in a month and just hated my life. All of my friends were borrowed from my sister and they were high schoolers and I was 20 so I felt lame. They were great people and I’m still friends with most of them.

Eventually I began to make my own friends, which was great. I took a year off of school and just waited until my mind was completely normal and healed. Eventually my brain was healed. It was a hardship though going to a psychiatrist and counseling to try and figure out what would help restore me. I would go into psychotic episodes a couple weekends out of every month for 6 months. Sometimes I wouldn’t sleep at all I would just stay up and my brain would race. It’s pretty sad to me that at the age of 20 I would have to sleep in my parents room for comfort, I love them for allowing me to do so but its just humbling to think that I was in that place in my life. One time I sat in my room all day and had hallucinations about the t.v. show scrubs and music playing, I was in another room in this hallucination but that’s just how crazy my brain was. Adversity is a word to describe this in the least.

After the psychotic episodes persisted for 6 months they just disappeared. I don’t know how it happened but I was healed. It could have been the medication but I’d like to believe it was through people’s prayers, God, and through the patience of my family.

I went back to school and received my associates with a 3.0  and finally figured out how to make school work. Many friends and good people entered my life in Florida and I am eternally grateful for all of those memories and people I share them with. Last summer I hit the gym really hard and lost 25 of the 30 pounds that I had gained. Then on a whim I decided to try and go back to school at UNL. I got in and fought to get financial aid and it all worked out. Now I’m living in Lincoln.  I just received my grades and got a 3.35 my first semester here and life seems to be on the up and up.

I don’t really know how to tell my story in as vivid detail as I’d like and you will never fully understand what I went through but I’m ok with that. Because everyone has a story of their own to tell. Everyone has faced adversity at one time in their life. When adversity comes like a storm you have a choice. You can choose to go inside and sleep and let the storm do what it wants. Or you can chose to stand out in the storm and weather it, fight it with all of you’ve got, and own the storm. I owned the storm that is adversity and I encourage everyone to stand and fight the elements that are their own unique gusts of adversity.