Javblanc
10th December 2022, 17:15
Some years ago I was diagnosed with a disease I had suffered since I was a child but which I did not know it was a disease. I simply suffered from it believing that it was part of my way of being. (This leads me to remark to those of you who are parents: if you notice that your child is gloomy, get him/her to a psychologist: probably he/she is suffering because of a mental illness.) This disease is called "Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder" (OCD for friends). When my mind is not occupied in something, it chooses to imagine terrible scenarios, that cause me panic because I judge them possible. I know it only depends on my will. But unfortunately my will has its own opinion about it and it seems not to depend completely on me. As a child, I imagined with terror that I was unable to walk ... and was paralyzed. If I heard about the dangers of rising blood pressure, I panicked and I myself caused a rise in tension. At school, I imagined being rejected by my classmates, and unconsciously, unable to avoid it, I managed to make myself unbearable in their eyes. When I think of any risk, I put all my effort to provoke the damage I fear. I thought that I should hate myself for some mysterious reason and that I wanted to kill myself. By the end of my studies, this state of affairs had simply become unbearable. I could not live like this for the rest of my life, I told myself, and I thought it would be convenient to shorten it as much as possible. I was (and still am within my limitations) a devout Christian, and suicide was a great sin, I believed. However, after a fierce internal struggle, despair won the battle. At that time I was studying Law, but I found it insipid, and since I had been very fond of reading and writing since I was a child (it was the subterfuge I found to avoid my uncontrollable self-destructive thoughts), I decided to give myself one last chance on behalf of that hobby of mine. I talked to God, as I used to, and I said "Look, I can not stand it anymore; if you don't give me an incentive to live, I'll give up." And then I remembered the literary contest I had participated in recently, and I did something terrible: I "blackmailed" God, I gave Him an ultimatum: "If I win that contest", I said, "I will have an incentive to keep fighting". In the meantime, I began to make preparations for my discreet leaving through the back door, because I had no hope of winning. Then a book caught my attention in a shop window: "Life after life" by Dr. Raymond Moody.
By the time I finished reading the book, I felt still as bad as when I started it, but I did not want to take my own life anymore. I wanted to learn more about that strange experience called NDE, and I read other books that dealt with the same subject (Dr. Moody had published his book in 1975 and caused such a commotion among the medical class that many of his colleagues followed in his wake, so when I read his book there was already a lot of literature about NDE). All corroborated the study conducted by Dr. Moody. "So there really is an Afterlife!", I thought. And, well, for a desperate person, an Afterlife is the closest thing to a hope; so I abandoned my intention to take my life. I knew it would be a hard life; it would not be the happy life enjoyed by the people around me. Oh, but after this life, I expected another! And after all, I could use this life -even if it was a sad one- to do something positive, something that would be useful to others. At that time I didn't even remember the contest. So imagine my surprise when I received a call telling me I had win.
The contest was intended to find young people with talent for scriptwriting, so I started to make a living as a screenwriter on different television channels. That allowed me to fulfill my promise to dedicate myself to helping the disadvantaged: I kept what I needed to live and dedicated the rest to collaborating in charities. I also volunteered to help people with disabilities. At that time, things hardly attributable to chance began to happen to me. Among them, the one that struck me the most was encountering the girl I had met ten years ago, when I was about thirteen years old and my sister came home in the company of a classmate… But this is another story.
By the time I finished reading the book, I felt still as bad as when I started it, but I did not want to take my own life anymore. I wanted to learn more about that strange experience called NDE, and I read other books that dealt with the same subject (Dr. Moody had published his book in 1975 and caused such a commotion among the medical class that many of his colleagues followed in his wake, so when I read his book there was already a lot of literature about NDE). All corroborated the study conducted by Dr. Moody. "So there really is an Afterlife!", I thought. And, well, for a desperate person, an Afterlife is the closest thing to a hope; so I abandoned my intention to take my life. I knew it would be a hard life; it would not be the happy life enjoyed by the people around me. Oh, but after this life, I expected another! And after all, I could use this life -even if it was a sad one- to do something positive, something that would be useful to others. At that time I didn't even remember the contest. So imagine my surprise when I received a call telling me I had win.
The contest was intended to find young people with talent for scriptwriting, so I started to make a living as a screenwriter on different television channels. That allowed me to fulfill my promise to dedicate myself to helping the disadvantaged: I kept what I needed to live and dedicated the rest to collaborating in charities. I also volunteered to help people with disabilities. At that time, things hardly attributable to chance began to happen to me. Among them, the one that struck me the most was encountering the girl I had met ten years ago, when I was about thirteen years old and my sister came home in the company of a classmate… But this is another story.