Nights In The Convent
I've been watching the show “ Call The Midwife.” It’s set in London in the 1950's in a convent that is dedicated to helping women with childbirth.
It brought back my memories of the time I lived in a convent. I was in my early twenties, and the convent had been converted into a half way house for people with mental problems and eating disorders, or for those just needing a bit of help in life.
I was lost, as so many young people are today. It seems now that I look back at it, and after reading the many WhisperApp post; where the young are so lonely, confused, hurting and lost. It must be a right of passage for many of us at that age.
Why do so many of us have to go through this confused time in life? Trying to figure out who we are, and what we are supposed to do in life. It’s a mystery to me, but some of us just have to go through it, that is, if we make it past the suicide attempts.
Being inflicted with this rite of passage is not something I would want my own kids to go through. It’s a horrible disconnected lonely struggle with life. It’s empty and it leads you right into the suicide thoughts, that grip your mind with constant thoughts of leaving what we really don’t understand for something we know nothing about.
The convent was L shaped and my room was at the bottom of the L on the left side.
My room was two shades of purple. I loved my room. I didn't have to share with anyone, it was just my room. It had a little sink, bed and closet. Small but perfect. I lay in the bed for hours thinking about the nun who used to have this room. What was she like? Did she ever suffer such confusion in the mind? Why would she choose to be a nun? Didn't she want to be in love, like I so desired?
There were 12 of us at the time I lived there, and we had two housemasters. The housemasters were older people who lived there to help us find our way. Each person had to cook dinner for the rest of us at least a few times a month. That was a task to cook dinner for 14 people! I remember the one night one of the people with schizophrenia had to cook dinner. Well this is what he did. He took every single item in the refrigerator and put a little of each item into a big cooking pot. I mean EVERY item! He stirred it all together and that was dinner. As we sat there and tried not to offend him as to why none of us would eat it, the tension rose and he freaked out, he climbed out the kitchen window and up into the tree. It was a sad disaster. I felt terrible we had to break is heart, but really it was not something even a dog would like to eat. He spent hours in the tree as the housemasters tried to talk him down. The rest of us went our way, and found something else to eat.
My time in the chapel room.
At the long end of the the big L was the chapel. It was a beautiful chapel and we had meetings there in the day time. At night time it was my room. I set my bass amp, bass guitar, and mic on the stage, where times before some Priest had stood and preached the word of God. I would play the songs I had written, like “Little Piece Of Paper” and “The Mercy Ghost” to no one. It was one of the happy times for me. There I was singing and dreaming that I was some rock star.
In the back of the stage there were many boxes filled with the pamphlets the nuns used to hand out. They were left there, and no one cared about tossing them in the trash. I would look through the pamphlets and my heart would break as I saw all the cruel things people would do to other people around the world. Anyone would donate money after seeing those brutal truths.
I Was Engulfed In Depression
I really do not know why depression took over my body. It was some sort of family inheritance, mixed with a life lost in a world of what to do. I remember how horrible I felt. This depression was an all consuming feeling of my body. My body felt as if it could not move, the weight of it crushed me down into spending countless hours alone in my room.
One day my little sister got married. I went to the wedding and tried to be happy, but the whole entire wedding seemed unreal. It was as if, happy things had no meaning. It was pointless to me. There is no happily ever after, it was a cruel joke on my mind, so I decided to take all the 90 plus anti depression pills I had that night, after the wedding.
Spinning Walls And Footsteps
For the next two days I lay locked in my room. Lying in the bed waiting to die. Yet all I had accomplished is giving myself some kind of wild LSD trip. When awake the walls moved, the ceiling spun, the two colors of purple weaved in and out of each other. Foot steps would be at my door, people would knock and ask, and I couldn't speak a word, I was frozen in a psychedelic state of dis-pare.
Every time I woke up out of the sedated power of the overdose, it was worse. The noises of the evil world of death, kept taunting me. The spinning was making me dizzy, why wouldn't my body die? Surly I had taken enough pills!
On day two, late into the evening, I somehow got out of bed and answered the door. The ambulance came and I never returned to my purple room.
This Kind Of Struggle Can Last For Years
Many people in my family have struggled with this type of depression, both my sisters. One of my brothers and, extended family members also have, including my dear cousin Van who succeeded in his suicide attempt.
As I grew older, I learned how to cope with it. I learned how exercise is one of the best medicines to keep it at bay. Eating healthy is another great choice to keep my mind in check. I choose not to take any kind of pills for it. I don’t think of killing myself any longer, but once in a great while the thought will come out of hiding in my mind and dash across it as if to tease me into thinking it’s something great to do.
I’m Saddened For Those Who Do Not Make It
Like my cousin Van. He was 24 years old when he jumped in front of that train. I know what it’s like for all of the young people today that I find on WhisperApp. I reach out to them and try to give them some kind of hope to get through it. It is indeed a very high hurdle to cross, and when it takes your life for years and years, the battle to stay alive gets extremly tough. I can’t promise them a great life, not even a good life. It’s up to them to make their own life a happy life. I just try to break the hold it has on them.
Finding the power within yourself to learn how to overcome depressions grip could be a life long challenge. But if you stop it, or learn how to control it, sooner than later you will have a way better life, and less years of misery. Some people go through life always on a happy note, but some of us have to carry a heavy load. I don’t have the answers, I just know one thing is for sure, we only have one life, so why not live until your life is taken either the natural way, old age, or fate? The hard road won’t always be hard, the misery won’t always be unbearable. Joys will come and go. And who knows maybe someday I’ll be on some stage singing my songs, just because I can.
