Sometimes I scream and cry and breakdown saying “I want to go home”, I don’t have that opportunity though. I don’t have a “home” and never have. Growing up we moved a lot, my mom was a single parent to three children all around the same age by a few years, she was abused in countless ways by men that would promise to take care of her and help with us kids.

But they never did.

I never felt safe where I lived, always in fear of being beaten during the day or raped when I went to sleep if I could. Because that is what happened.

When I moved on my own I was 16, I couldn’t take being around my family knowing we all were abused and no one was strong enough to voice it. I wanted to rebel and feel safe and capable of taking care of myself. I lived in my girlfriend car at the time for a month until she wanted to move back to her home. Then I slept under the I75 bridge for almost a year, being terrorized by older men and people that thought I was a drug addict. It took me months during that time to get the courage to sit in front of stores asking for change. I got a sleeping bag from a mother with her children and some cans of food from teenagers in the area.

I spent the next year and a half meeting people and going to raves and selling fake ecstasy that were just vitamins that I scraped the logo off. I was then able to couch surf and even have rooms in people’s houses, I took busses to jobs I could get and we’re able to hold until it was too cold to walk to. This is when it happened. The voices I had always thought were normal conscious thoughts started yelling at me, telling me I deserved these horrible things. I was alone and scared and started using drugs to quiet things down. It would help for a few hours, the dizzy feeling, that apathy to bring cold and alone, the thought I could just live like this forever OK. But then it wears off, and things feel MUCH worse inside.

That hour or so of just not caring and being OK with things was all I needed to be comforted then. I wasn’t strung out because I didn’t have the money or way to fulfill that need. I used when I was able to, which allowed me to receive my GED by taking a test at the local high school. I was fortunate enough to have my identification so I could, I started dating someone new and she went away to college. I followed and got a job and car while living with roommates in a college town. I enrolled and finished, mostly.

After school and a breakup, I asked to move to my mom’s home and she was happy to take me in. Things were going to start getting better I thought. I started working for a tattoo shop scrubbing metal tubes, setting up work stations, and eventually becoming a piercing artist. But the shop I was in ended up being the stereotypical tattoo shop with stereotypical tattoo artists. Unable to handle the daily cash pay, with a liqour store next door and drug addicts for Co-workers, I got prideful. I got a luxery apartment and a convertable within a few months and left my family again. I would have parties where drugs were everywhere and Noone cared about anything except the amenities that came with being my friend. Holes were put in the walls, spray paint on the walls, and an overdose.

My overdose.

Everyone left but one person when I was foaming at the mouth, my body jerking, and my eyes rolling back. I never used a drug again after that Christmas eve. But the Schizophrenia that I was diagnosed with did get worse, terrified of shadow people, screaming voices in my head telling me that I’m worthless, fat, disgusting, dying, and everyone hated me. The anxiety from this has given me a few other disorders now and psysical symptoms too.

I was able to work in a field I loved and get back on my feet and have children. Then the mental illness really ramped up thinking about my kids safety and insecurities as a parent with all this in my head caused by adults and what could happen to them. I want them to feel so loved and safe at home. One is with me and her mother and grandparents and one is with their mother from the previous relationship across the country. They both have loving, caring, safe homes with people that love them and take care of them.

I’m having a hard time right now feeling worthless, and I want to go home but that place doesn’t exist. I’m terrified I’m dying, my kids are going to be scared and alone, my wife will leave me, my son won’t know me or think I didn’t try hard enough.

Everyday is new chance to try and be able to have my first real home.

Keep going, please.

No introduction really yet or anything let’s get straight into it.

I’m a dad, a husband, a brother, a son, a certified adult with a full time job (OK I’ve had over 50), but I can’t take care of myself anymore. I’ve tried and tried but I feel like a piece of drift wood where half the time I’m floating with no idea what is going on and the other half I have my body and mind feeling beaten over and over. I always have to tell people how it feels because just saying severe anxiety and schizophrenia won’t do it and I’m not going to get into trying to have that and real life. Right now I’m focused on how this FEELS because I’m terrified, and trying to make others feel empathy is so so hard.

• You found out your dying but don’t know when or how
• You were told you were poisoned
• Feeling high or drunk without eating or drinking
• The feeling of a close relative or friend recently dying
• Electricity flowing through your body just leaving it buzzed feeling

I’m literally scared ALL OF THE TIME , of nothing, of everything. I cry 3–6 times a day, I think about my kids and I just fall apart. I have no reason please don’t ask for reasons. I hear the most vile negative voices telling me the worst things about myself 24 hours a day. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, just never ending hate. Imagine not being scared and just being able to do your job that you LOVE. I’m losing my job, I’ve lost my kids in my daily life.

I wrote this because I have to go to my simple job that I used to love and now stay up in wet clothing from sweat and tears dreading the thought I have to feel all those feelings away from my room. I want to be in a hospital but they take your things and leave you to sit alone. Being alone makes all of those feelings take over.

I’m so Fucking scared, so so terrified.

Please don’t ask me of what.