I was born in the year 1956. My mother was a housewife and my father a pharmacist. We lived in the town of Sutton Coldfield. Most of my childhood was quite uncomplicated and uneventful. I do remember that I felt quite unloved and lonely. This was because I believed nobody could possibly love me because I was fat and ugly. At school I was never really very clever but got by. When I was 10 years old my brother Simon was born. He meant the world to me and I loved him very much. During the years of my secondary education I worked really hard and achieved good results. I had managed to make many friends whom I enjoyed spending time with. At the age of 16 I left school and went onto college. There I did a pre-nursing course.

Neither of my parents were Christians. Indeed, I felt as if they were both quite anti. As a child I believed in a God and would often pray. At night I got into great bondage about praying for everybody I knew. I believed that if I left anybody out they would die.

It was during my two college years that I met Bob who later on I married. After completing my course at college I decided to go and work at my father’s chemist shop and go to college one day a week to train as a Pharmacy Technician.

Bob and I married in 1975. We lived very happily in a new 2 bedroom semi-detached house at Tamworth. Bob worked as a Chain maker in a factory in Birmingham. We had many friends and enjoyed a good life, Bob’s mum and dad had recently given up their faith as Jehovah’s Witnesses.

In Jan 1978 our first child arrived. It was a wonderful baby girl called Emma. She was beautiful and we loved her very much. I gave up work to look after Emma. This I really enjoyed doing. When Emma was about a month old I experienced my first strange encounter. It was about 2:00 o’clock in the morning when I was awakened by Emma crying. She was in a carrycot next to our bed. I turned to her but was shocked by what I saw. Emma was sitting bolt upright her complexion was grey and her eyes wide open and white. I screamed and woke Bob up. However when I looked at Emma again she lay perfectly normally in her carrycot. I could offer many explanations for what I had seen, none of which made me feel any more at ease about it.

Not long after Emma was born we moved house. This was to a three-bedroom semi in Birmingham. It was there that our second child Michael was born in December 1979. What more could we ask for; two lovely children, a pleasant house and each other. When Michael was a few months old, my life really began to fall apart.

I hope by writing an account of what happened to my self over the next 19 years will help family, friends, and whoever reads it, understand a little more about this kind of illness. It is very hard for me to remember a lot of the past, but I will do my best to give an account of it.

One ordinary morning, after bathing Emma and Michael, I was cleaning out the bath. On turning around to see what they were both doing I found Emma drinking out of a bottle of cough mixture. Instead of taking it off her, I heard a voice telling me to let her drink it all. After a minute or so I realized what had happened and panicked. Emma ended up in our local casualty department where she was given an emetic to make her sick and admitted into hospital for observation. How could I have allowed that to happen? I was so upset but never told anyone the truth. Emma fortunately made a quick recovery.

The next incident took place in the kitchen. I was making some sandwiches one evening when again a voice clearly said to me "cut your wrist”. It at the time seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do, so I obeyed. I remember standing in the kitchen feeling very calm with a large gash on my left wrist. Obviously Ihad to get help for it so I told Bob I had slipped with the knife.

It was about this time also that I remember feeling trapped in a world of lies and deceit. I would make up stories to friends and family about different things and would believe them myself. I was very unhappy and felt very depressed. One evening I felt driven by some force to drink a bottle of cough mixture myself. Bob, however, was suspicious and got me to tell him what I had done. He was by this time aware of the fact I had problems. After having my stomach pumped and spending a few days in hospital we decided I needed help. My GP referred me to a psychiatrist.

While waiting to see a psychiatrist I cut my leg badly. When it was due to have the stitches removed I cut it again. The voices I heard driving me to do this made it seem the right thing to do. Also by now I was tormented by a large black figure. This never spoke to me but I would hear its clothes rustling and smell a type of warmth from it. It would torment me by trying to touch me and watched everything I did. The voices would tell me that if I did not obey them I would harm my children whom I loved very much. They seemed to feed on the evil that cutting myself did. They enjoyed the blood and pain these acts caused me. I began cutting my body where nobody could see and not telling anyone. Bob however grew wise to this and checked me regularly. I was constantly at the hospital being stitched up. Sometimes they were nice to me and gave me a local anaesthetic, other times they were very off with me and gave me no anaesthetic.

Finally after another cut the hospital arranged for me to see a psychiatrist because I had become a real danger to myself. This resulted in my being admitted to a psychiatric hospital. I was diagnosed as schizophrenic and given medication. After not sleeping for about four nights and hallucinating badly I was given E.C.T.(electric shock treatment). I hated being in hospital and was very upset at having to leave my children. My parents and Bob’s parents were looking after them. After about3 months I was allowed back home, however nothing much had changed. By now I was really depressed and found it very hard to get back into day to day living. Mornings were especially hard. Friends I had made in the street where we lived just did not want to know me anymore and I felt very lonely. It was only a matter of days before I was admitted into hospital again. More E.C.T. was given and large doses of medication; I was also put on injections. Again after about 3 months I was allowed home again.

Bob’s job moved to Rugeley so we decided to try and make a new start by moving house. This was hard at first but we managed. After a little while Richard our third child arrived. Obviously I was off all medication while pregnant. Hopefully all those bad experiences were in the past. There were times when I felt down and would have disturbing thoughts but they did not get out of hand. I made many new friends in Rugeley and felt we had done the right thing in moving. On the whole I remained quite well for a couple of years, and enjoyed very much being a mom and a housewife. Once again when Richard was only 9 months old I became pregnant again. We moved to another house in Rugeley, here Vicky was born quite dramatically by an emergency caesarean. The pregnancy had been awful and I vowed it would mean "no more children". After Vicky was born I had very bad back pain which lasted about 4 months and ended up by having traction as an outpatient. Once this was better, I began working at one of the local playgroups five mornings a week. This was really enjoyable.

My family was all doing well Emma and Michael were both getting on fine at school and Richard and Vicky attended the playgroup with me. Bob was still working as a chainmaker. It was at this point that a friend named Jan asked me if I would like to attend a meeting and meal free of charge at her church. I said yes. This turned out to be quite a night. The person who was speaking seemed to know all about me and I felt got at. However after she had finished speaking I was introduced to Barbie the wife of the Pastor who led the church. She discussed a few things with me and I ended up giving my life to God, it felt good and I was very contented. (Bob also became a Christian shortly after)

However it did not last. I began once again to feel very threatened. This was especially true when I attended church. Everyone seemed so happy andI just felt a threat to them. Barbie was very helpful. It was about now that I also left working at the playgroup. Slowly the figure appeared again. It was always present with me. I could not always see it but heard it breathing and moving around. Sometimes I believed it was interfering with my children at night or when at school. I also began cutting myself again. More often than not I was in a world of my own. A world full of lies that I believed, and constant torment. I went through deliverance, which appeared to work for a while. However I feel now that this was because I wanted it to work so much that I made it work. Obviously I could not keep this up and things gradually got worse and worse. The only thing that was different this time was I had many friends from the church that stuck by me, unlike before when they had not wanted anything to do with me. Also above everything I had a relationship with God. Somehow this made it more difficult because I could not be healed and lead a normal Christian life. I felt I did not live up to everyone’s expectations of me. To be totally honest I don’t know how we managed as a family. I could not cope with the children and running of a house. Bob’s mum and dad would come and stay sometimes and my mom and dad would sometimes have one of the children.

Eventually the inevitable happened and I ended up in hospital again. The injections started again and I was given more E.C.T. I became really ill and can’t honestly remember much about it. I do know that I would harm myself given the slightest opportunity.

I was over the period of about 6 years admitted into hospital about 10 times; I took a couple of overdoses out of sheer desperation. I cannot emphasize enough how much I hated being in hospital away from my family. Various drugs were tried and more often than not I was heavily sedated. It was during these years that I experienced another complication: DEPRESSION. This was utterly and totally awful, it would completely consume me. When I was at home the depression was very hard to cope with. I would feel so desperately tired all the time and go about constantly crying. My legs would shake uncontrollably and I had a constant "bad" feeling in my body. The only thing I felt like doing was lying in bed. My motivation was non-existent. The main thought I had was just to kill myself. Depression is the very worst thing that has ever happened to me. Sometimes the depression would lift a little and I would manage to catch up on a few jobs. Life seemed very hard and I felt really sorry for Bob my husband and the children. I was unable to look after them properly. However, I really thank God for them because they were the only thing that kept me going. The depression and schizophrenia never seemed to go completely, it was always there.

About this time I began to attend a group for people with mental health problems in Rugeley run by social services. I attended 3 days a week from 10am– 2pm. At the group we did various things like cooking, having speakers, play games, do quizzes, even going out for the day etc. Without these groups I would have had nothing. All the people I used to see seemed to drift away from me, I suppose they were probably fed up with me. I had 3 friends Di, Megan and Rosalie who tried hard to help me. Often when things were really bad, I would telephone them. However I could not understand why God had stripped me of everyone I had known when I was so desperate. I cannot emphasise enough how desperate and lonely I felt. The only one to cry out to was God, I would beg and plead with him to help me and make me well again; over and over again I would ask him this. Finally I became so ill that I was put in hospital on a 6-month ‘section’ (this is where you are detained by law for up to the specific period, or until they say you are well enough to go home again. If that period is not enough it can be renewed again for the same period on the decision of 2 doctors and a social worker.) I had a nurse with me 24 hrs a day. The voices and figure were my world and everything revolved around them. The top parts of my legs are just covered in cuts. These are scars that are going to remain with me for the rest of my life causing me to be reminded frequently about my illness. When I finally came out of hospital, I had to learn how to rebuild my life, it was very hard. The group became very important to me and so did God. I was still very depressed and disturbed, Bob was a tremendous help, I do thank God for him and want to thank him so much for sticking by me. It would have been so much easier for him to have given up on me but thank God he didn’t. Why had people deserted me so? I could not understand it. I would cry out to God to let the phone ring or the doorbell to ring. Why did I have to cope with all the housework and daily tasks so alone? All I wanted was afriend. I fully believed they must all have hated me and conspired to abandon me at a time I needed them more than ever.

Then one day something really positive happened, Bob and I had taken Vicky to the children’s hospital in Birmingham to have a heart murmur problem seen to. After we left the hospital Bob asked if I would like to go and have a look around the shops. I felt low and could not; however, I said if he wanted to go with Vicky I would wait in the car. This was what happened, while I was in the car, I clearly heard God say to me that I was healed and that from then on I would never go back to being so ill as before. Slowly I would get better and better. The road now would be downhill all the way. When Bob came back to the car I told him what had happened, I had always thought that when God healed a person it was instant and they felt great from then on. This wasn’t how it was for me. It was to be a process; God told me I would never go back into hospital again and praise him I’ve been out now for 15 months. There were really low times but not as bad as before. I was put on some different tablets which stopped all the voices and figure activity. The times of depression have very gradually got fewer and less severe and I have begun to enjoy life again. All this I have done with God, he has shown me that what happens now is an attack of the enemy and with him I can overcome this.

I really appreciate life now, I enjoy my family very much and amslowly making up to them all the years of struggling. I enjoy my home very much and am so grateful for it, I notice outside how beautiful God’s creation is: all the different seasons. It’s really wonderful. Most of all I thank God for how he has blessed my relationship with Bob; I love him in a way I never thought possible. We are able to do things together and make plans. I see each day now as a new challenge with God first. God has also taught me many things. He has shown me that I can bring good out of my terrible experiences, by using my insight of illnesses to help others in the same predicament as I was, or anyone who may be struggling. He has also shown me that the times I called out to him in loneliness were the times I grew closer to him. He was there when no one else was. Therefore I have learned to lean on him, the rock, and not man. At the moment the Lord has told me I am to try and put him first in my life. My family is older now, and are not so dependent on me. To put God first has meant I have had to learn to discipline myself by praying daily and getting to know the Lord by reading my bible. I feel he is going to use me soon in some way and I am looking forward very much to this.

I do hope this account of what I have written will bless many people and deepen or challenge them in their walk with God. If anybody reads this who suffers from schizophrenia or depression, then just know that God will never allow you to go through more than you can cope with, even if it seems very close. With him, there is always light at the end of that tunnel and he will lead you towards this light. I pray for you to that he will give you something positive to hang on to.

I know too that I will probably be on injections and tablets for the rest of my life so never feel you shouldn’t take what is prescribed to you –God can work through drugs.

God bless you. Sue Mason 1998

              © Bobbysoft 1998