"The Battle Begins" Part 2

I can remember her asking me what was wrong, but by that point my mind wasn’t really connected to what was going on around me. It was like I had become dislodged from my body, peering from another point of view.

Even though the perspective had changed, the pain and overwhelming since of fear had not. It forced me to a place of despair and torment, and at the peak of my agony I was shown the world at its fullness. High above the clouds and landmasses, I peered down, as images of people screaming and children crying filled my mind. How lost they felt, their pain was mind numbing.

The images seemed to last forever, but more than what I saw is what I felt. It’s hard to describe, but it was like being lost from the presence of God, denied his grace, and being forced to view the things I have said. After what seemed like forever, I found myself back in my body, still crying and still in intense pain.

The experience had left me that gaping hole of loss we often get when we lose something precious to us, except this was infinitely more intense. I kept those feelings and cried for days afterwards, my mind still going through all the things I had been forced to see and feel, but with the passage of time I was granted mercy, and eventually it allowed me to go back to as normal a life as I could.

I slowly started to accept that perhaps, just perhaps everything was going to be the way it used to be, but that would prove to be a false dream.

After I calmed down, about a week went by from that point until I started to notice faint mumbles in my mind, voices and noises that would come and go. I had hoped that they too would fade back into the nothingness from which they came, but by the time I had started back to school, it became all to clear they were here to stay.

My day to day activities that were normally simple and fast became very slow and complex tasks, for the simple fact that I had to try and concentrate through these voices. Weeks had gone by since they first came, and by this point the mumbles had turned into clearly understandable words, and I wondered what was happening to me.

During this phase of my life, the voices seemed to be more than two sided; it was more like listening to an argument between good and evil.

I often imagined the good angel and bad on each of my shoulders arguing back and forth through my ears, I had to try and find some sort of amusement in the situation.

Math was my hardest hit subject, and some parts of English. Really anything where you had to be focused on what you were doing became very irritating.

Imagine talking to someone across a cafeteria full of middle schoolers, in your normal talking voice, and you have what it was about like for me to talk to myself in my mind. How I ever made it through my classes I’ll never know.

There was times however, that the voices subsided and left me, it was rare, but it did occur on occasion. I can remember thinking that maybe it was finally over, that my prayers were finally going to be answered in these instances, but the voices always eventually returned.

In time I just came to accept that sometimes they weren’t there. It could be compared to a really hot week in the middle of summer, and for some reason in the middle you get a day in the seventies. You know the heat is coming back, so it makes that one cool day all the more sweet. Ah how I wished for cooler days.

I did eventually mention my problems to close family, but they were as lost as I was about the whole situation. For a time I considered professional help, but my financial situation wasn’t the best, better than it is now, but it was not so much better that I could afford a shrink.

The idea that I was crazy was also something I couldn’t accept, and I knew if I went to a mental aid worker of any kind that is what they would label me as, and if not crazy, then some other chemical imbalance, which would most likely lead to heavy medications. None of these scenarios were acceptable to me, not only because of money, but because I could feel that it was more.

As I said, during the first phase of my inner battle, the voices were aimed more at each other than any thing else. Even though I sometimes understood what they said, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t sometimes speak in strange alien sounds that I didn’t comprehend.

When I did follow the words, it was like both sides taunted each other in a way. The darker voices often spoke of how the world was theirs and the end was near for people. Then the voices of light normally defended man and their actions, and declared that God was the only real power to bring about any sort of end.

Now these examples are not quotes, and I’m sure that their were many other things said, but this first phase happened almost two decades ago, so it’s doubtful I could provide actual quotes. I can however safely summarize that the majority of my hours were spent listening to words that followed similar roads. If I had known that I would one day want to share my story with the world, then I would have kept notes, but no such recognition was in my little mind at this age, on the contrary, all I ever wanted was for all of it to just go away.