I have lived with fear almost my whole life. Almost as long as I can remember, I was scared of the “things” that were under the bed and that were “watching” me whenever I was in the house alone. I lived in a big old farmhouse up on a windy hill and I was the youngest and was left alone a lot.
Because of that, I spent as much time as I could outside with the animals and with my dad out in the barn. I loved that. I was really shy, but out there it didn’t matter. With me not able to attend the same school as my church friends, my loneliness persisted and my first suicide attempt occurred in grade 7 when I took a whole bottle of pills.

When I turned 15, things looked like they were getting better. I got contact lenses, I had more confidence and I started going out with my brothers friends who were from the church. Only problem was, all they were into was drinking and bush parties and I was too enamoured to say no. And a lot of the guys from the church figured that if you were a public school kid, you must be easy. Luckily my big brother was there to protect me.

Then when I was 17, my dad got cancer and died three weeks later. I was in his room when he died and it was absolutely terrifying. I had been pretty rebellious the half year before he died, and I never did get to say I loved him before he died. Before dad died, he told mom not to worry, that I was a good girl and that I would take care of things – even though I was the youngest in the family. I was “daddy’s” girl – he was really quiet and loved being outside on the farm, just like me. Now some big shot came and bought all our cattle and machinery and even though we owned the land, the farm wasn’t really ours anymore. My sister moved away to college, my one brother was in university and my other brother was always out, either partying with his friends or at home being absolutely miserable – trying to deal with his grief. So it was me and mom and I figured it was my job to make sure everything at home stayed ok. I didn’t want to talk to her about how horrible I was feeling about everything, so instead I would go out on the weekends and get absolutely plastered to take away the pain. Of course – that doesn’t work too well – I went from being an honour student to failing everything. Mom went to night school and joined a few social groups and I was left home even more in a house that really terrified me now that I knew for sure someone had died in it. I ended up thinking I was pregnant and the first thing my mom did was book an appointment with a “new doctor” in town who agreed with her that I had to have an abortion because this was my fault and mom couldn’t deal with this right now. She grounded me to just seeing my boyfriend once a week, so now I was alone on weekends too.

The only time I could talk about how horrible I was feeling was when I was really really drunk –. But I would wait for so long to talk about it that it only came out when I was really desperate and then the pain would be so bad that I would try to kill myself. One night I tried to run in front of a transport truck – but some guy grabbed me at the last minute. Another time, I tried to get out of the car so I could kill myself, but my boyfriend wouldn’t let me. So I tried to smash the car window out with my head – figuring if I couldn’t get out – at least that would kill me. He stopped me – but not before I had kicked his front windshield in. 

This whole time – even though I went to church regularly – no minister or anyone else ever talked to me about how things were going. They would ask my boyfriend how he was doing with the death of his girl friends father, but they never asked me. 

I moved out of the house when I was 18, because where I lived there weren’t any jobs and got a job an hour away from my home and all my friends. My boyfriend would pick me up on Friday night and take me back on Sundays. Every Sunday I would cry for about two hours, thinking that I was never going to see him again, that he too would die and leave me alone. I got married when I was 21, not because I was ready to get married, but because I wanted a normal life again. But getting married didn’t bring my dad back and it didn’t bring my family back. I cried for a whole week after the honeymoon and for the first 20 years of my life I cried every time my husband would go away on business, or go away with his friends – even if it was just for a couple of hours to play hockey. I had his whole funeral planned out – I had the poll bearers picked, the hymns, what I would wear – even who the single guys were in church in case I had to get remarried.

When my kids were born I had the same thing with them. I worked midnights in a nursing home when they were little and I would drive home every morning absolutely convinced that the house had burned down and they had all died while I was gone. I could see it all in my mind. The worst part was that I had convinced myself years before that God hated me and that I wasn’t going to go to heaven when I died and I would never see them again. 

I lived with this fear for about 25 years, but by this time it was normal for me and I thought I had things under control. I tried to be active in my church – but every time I would try to do something, it would work for a while and I would get really into it and then I would burn out. I couldn’t stand being at home, so I went to work full time. My husband started travelling a lot for work and my kids got older and needed more of my time for driving them around for stuff and I started to burn out in my personal life now too. So I decided to take a part time job to try to “slow” down. 

It was a disaster – suddenly I had time at home to face all my fears – and I couldn’t . My kids were teenagers and didn’t need me. I started breaking down the very first day that I was home. I couldn’t sleep – I couldn’t eat and worst of all – I couldn’t stop crying. I would cry non stop from morning to night. 

For three months I never slept more than two hours a night. Some nights I wouldn’t sleep at all and then I would be awake the whole next day. I tried to act normal while other people were around, but even that stopped eventually. I would shake uncontrollably for hours and then I started talking about death all the time. Some mornings it felt like something was attacking me and I couldn’t even stand. I tried praying and I would literally cry out to God to give me back my old job and let me go back to work every day – I thought he wasn’t listening though.

My friend finally got me to go to my doctor, but I only told him part of the problem and he gave me 50 sleeping pills. I thought – great – jackpot – I took 4 right away – but they didn’t even make me tired. I wanted to know how many of those pills I had to take to kill myself – so I went on the internet. I typed in “suicide” and happened to find a website of a person who was formerly suicidal. I wanted to know if God would let me go to heaven if I killed my self , so I clicked on this link that I figured would take me to some anonymous place that would hopefully give me the answer I wanted. Right way, I was emailed back and was offered to take a call from a this person. After that, we talked regularly. A couple of days later, my husband got laid off and I got even more depressed – so I tried to take all the sleeping pills. It was God’s grace that my husband was home that day and stopped me., but I broke down even more – I figured now I had really failed my family because I had quit my full time job and now my husband had no work and he didn’t qualify for unemployment either. I called my internet friend in a frantic state and he talked me down. Then he told me I should talk to my minister about my problems – so I did – even though I was really scared. Unfortunately – my minister said he understood all about depression and that he wanted to help me and then he handed me a card for a marriage and family counselor. I was suicidal – I didn’t have marriage problems. And he never did call me ever again. So my internet friend called around and found me a really great minister in my area who honestly did help me. He met with me for two hours, twice a week for 3 months until I overcame all my fears. And my internet friend called me twice a day to make sure I was ok and in control and to disarm any bad thoughts or feelings that had come up.

Through counseling I slowly began identifying my fears and the lies that I believed about myself which were stealing away my peace and making me feel like I was useless and deserved to die, such as: that I was not as good as everyone else – that I was a horrible mother and had put my family in financial straits by wanting to stay home – that my husband was going to die and leave me destitute. 

There were many times that my internet friend talked me out of doing myself harm. For a while I was cutting myself and he patiently talked me through it. If necessary he would call my husband and tell him that he needed to come home because I was suicidal – however, he never broke confidence either. He never judged me or made me feel like I was mentally ill.

For the last few months, I have been doing much better. Shortly after this whole situation started, an opportunity to work full-time at a university came up, which would allow our teenagers to attend the school at a reduced rate, and I got the job! When stressful situations come up at work, I can deal with them. I no longer scream at my children – we have a wonderful relationship now. I have control over every aspect of my life and when tough decisions need to be made, I can rationalize them, and have peace, knowing that I have made the best decision possible and I can live with the outcome no matter what unfolds. Not only that, an opportunity came up in our church for a friend and I to start a youth group, and that too has been going very well. 

I can honestly say I have not felt anxiety in a very long time – it feels like I am a new person.