By Stefan James Drew
January 18, 2016
To be honest, I don’t know how I would like to be remembered. I recently watched a movie called The Martian. It starred Matt Damon in a killer role as well as great supporting cast that helped made this book (turned film) into an reality. It really hit a main theme and the theme of the film was “How to survive living alone on a doomed planet”? If I was in Mark Watney’s shoes (name of the protagonist), I really truly would think that I would die alone and that I could not find a way to survive even with a Botany degree! This has really made me ponder in my own life. What have I done as a human on this planet? How have I helped/not helped the lives of people who have affected me? What can I do with the few moments I have left on this planet? See I used to think that I would live up until the age of 90 and be totally and completely happy. Since watching this movie, I have failed to realize that not all of us are lucky to live to a nice old age of 70 or beyond. Some of us people (like myself) have diseases that are not curable. We have to go back several years to discuss why I feel the way that I do.
It all began in the year of 1991. I was born at 23 weeks. See in medical terms, being born before 30 weeks is considered really bad. Basically you are going to have a lot of mental, development, and emotions skills that are going to be difficult and challenging in a world where everything is so fast pace. At 23 weeks, I did not have functional kidneys/liver. I had fluid in my lungs as well as having one of my lungs be slightly smaller than the average human baby is supposed to have. Being born into a world with everything so fast pace, it was hard for me to adapt growing up. I barely had enough bonding time with my mother because I was so sickly. My family had to watch me from a window in the ICU and on top of that, I was slowly dying. I couldn’t imagine what must have been going through my mother’s mind let alone the rest of my family’s. Yet somehow, I managed to survive the first two weeks of being on this planet. It just got more difficult for me after leaving the hospital after 3 months of being born. I didn’t learn to crawl until the age of 3 and didn’t begin to speak actual words until the age of 4. By time I was 4, my mother was so sick with diabetes and my teenage half-siblings couldn’t take care of me that I was dumped from foster home to foster home. Talk about being a fighter! Looking back on the first several years of my life it was very hard for me to fit in. To this very day I suffer from social anxiety. I always care about how I talk/relate to people. At the age of six, both of my biological parents died within a week of each other. Thus, I withdrew more into myself. I did not have a lot of friends growing up in New York especially in the projects/section 8 housing it was extremely tough. Then came the adoption of my blood family within the same year my parents died.
As soon as I was adopted by my 29 year difference of my 1st cousin and his family, my life seemed to go from bad to worse. I will not go into details of being raped numerous of times from cousins and uncles and having the adoptive family not believe a damn thing I told them. Nor will I bore you with details of when I came out to my family they not only laughed in my face but they also told me that it was a phase. If you really want to know, come to my apartment on Sunday’s and I would be more than happy to give you the details. This note is way too long to read anyhow. Back to coming out, I realized that at the age of 13 that something was wrong with my head. I had more “friends” who were guys than girls. I hit puberty but I was confused with my sexuality cause I truly thought that I was transgender, but I didn’t know at the time what I was dealing with. By the time I was 18 and graduated from college, I truly believed that something was major wrong with my head. I begged, pleaded, constantly thought of ways of committing suicide because I was losing friends and didn’t know how to “communicate” to people what was going on in my head. I would black out from angry outbursts; I would have major highs and major lows. Sometimes I would be so depressed that I would stay in bed for months at a time and barely ate anything and lose jobs left and right because I was suffering from my mental problems so badly.
Here I am 21, I am at my adopted sis’ college commencement and I come out again and I didn’t care at that time. I gained over 120 pounds and I’m sluggish and constantly gaining more and more weight and trying numerous ways to commit suicide and failing each time. I’m always thirsty and constantly using the bathroom every 5 mins cause my bladder and uterus hurts so badly from holding it. I go to the Dr and get tested and I have not only diabetes but around that time I saved up enough to get tested for my mental problems. I am professionally diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, Maniac Depression, Suicidal Ideation, and finally Intermittent Explosive Disorder. At that point, I hated my life at home; I had no friends; and I lost another job before the year was over.
I hit rock bottom! Life is no better. No family. I chose to leave my adoptive family behind and never talk to them up to this current day. I had girlfriends and exes. There was this one girl who caught my eye and truly stayed with me for over 18 turbulent months of roller coaster rides with me. For the longest time, I kept thinking that she could be better without me. I’m suffering from my anxiety and my highs and in December of 2014, I take over 30 pills of Unisom sleeping pills so that I could help aid my love the burden and pain of dealing with me and I hated myself so much that I was ready to die! As I am closing my eyes and slowly breathing, I swear to you that I heard a audible voice of my lovely dead grandmother tell me to fight and that I am not through living/saving people. Trust me, I didn’t want to. I wanted to not have to disappoint people I cared and loved. My living situation was the literal shits! Having 8 people live in a 2 bedroom/2 bathroom apartment makes you go crazy. Again if you want the details come to my house. I hated that it seemed that everyone was using me for their own advantages. Through it all my girlfriend loved me and showed me a different way to live life. She visited me at the psych ward; she is my cheerleader. She kept pushing me to live a better life. A life without thinking that my past is what will set the course of my life. I got to choose who I wanted to be my parents, siblings, and cousins and it was truly a mind blowing experience for me. It got easier but it did not come easy. A lot of crying, sweat, and still suffering from my mental illnesses this girl stuck with me through it all!
Recently, I had a pharmacist give my current girlfriend advice about my diabetes. Mind you life is still tough for me. I work a dead end fast food job and too scared to go back to college (I was a college dropout) due to my mental illnesses and thinking that I may fail again. Basically the advice this pharmacist told my girlfriend is that my body is slowly shutting down on me. I don’t make enough money to afford any of my medications and I have not been able to afford my mental medications and my diabetic medications for over 4 years now. I’m in no way complaining and asking for sympathy, I’m just being real. I truly feel and believe that I’m gonna be gone from this earth by the age of 40 just cause I don’t make enough money to afford my medications. And you would think that if the medical field would want people to live longer they would help but yet they don’t actually help you when you actually need it the most. Kinda of the reason I hate going to anything medical related because they tell you how to get better but they don’t make anything affordable in order for you to live longer. Which is why I am up this early in the morning writing down what I am feeling and it is this. I am a hero and I am a symbol.
My legacy is that even though I may not “have it all”, I want people to know that even though you may be pushed to the point that you feel like suicide is the answer that you can be a hero to someone, anyone! That sometimes all it takes is a phone call to tell people that you love them. That a hug is all it takes to help a person not go to that dark place. I want to hang out more often while I still have life in me. I want to have more meaningful friendships and add more people in my family circle. I would love to talk to people about my life and have people say that because of my story that they didn’t want to end it! That because of me that they chose to fight! That they decided to chase after their dreams and actually achieve them! Before I eventually leave this earth, I want to live a life so blessed that I have no regrets! To this day, I still suffer with my anxiety and whether I truly do make a difference on this earth. I still suffer from how people think about me. I still suffer with whether I talk “correctly” to people and they don’t look at me weird. I still suffer from my suicidal thoughts but I know better ways to distract myself. SO…if you are still reading this please do this as a legacy for me. Actually spend time with loved ones, call them up even if you haven’t talked in ages. Constantly tell people you love them! Hug more! Love more! Forgive more! ( I’m working on that one…it’s really tough but it’s worth it)!
As this is coming to a close, I want to thank every person who took the times to read this. I greatly appreciate you! I cherish every person that has come into my life and without you (whether you have been with me from the very beginning or you just recently met me) I truly do believe that I would not be here. So again, thank you!