Growing up, I suffered and experienced tremendous loss; the result was unimaginable pain, physically, mentally and emotionally. It was something that I did not even know had a name. I was full of fear and panic and anxiety was my constant companion. And by sixteen years old, I had withered down to a mere eighty-nine pounds, having a height of five feet ten inches. In these next few pages, I will describe and expound upon my Childhood, Adolescence, Dark Night of the Soul, Anxiety Attacks, Perceived Causes, Manifestations, Other Phobias, and the Healing Process. Due to the sensitive nature of the subject, I will not be sending any documentation for this exposition.
Childhood
As a kid my mother would often say to me: "Stop begging for friendship." I never fully understood what she was trying to say to me then. But I think I understand it a little better now than before. I was always a loner. Even though often I knew many people, there were very few that considered me to be their friend. I grew up feeling lonely and isolated. I think that the experience or at least one of them that affected me the most was the absence of my father. Loss of a parent tremendously affects the healthy emotional and physical growth of a child. I did not realize it then as a kid, but now looking back in retrospect, I can see that it is probably one of the most significant in my life. Probably what I remember most about my father is the fact that he disciplined us often. It was almost as if it were a weekend ritual. My mother would ask him why he was spanking us; and he would respond: "so that they will remember that I am their father." Besides the disciplining, I remember that on Saturday mornings, my father would watch cartoons with me. He would ask me to prepare for him a bowl of Puffed Wheat and to put a lot of sugar in it. I think this is where I got my sweet tooth from. It is curious to see how much alike we probably were, even if I never had the chance of really knowing him. I don't know, but maybe this is one of the reasons that I suffered self-resentment for so long. The images during childhood and the experiences a child has greatly affects during a whole lifetime the way in which a child thinks and matures. I did not realize this until I was an adult. During the childhood years, a child lacks the ability of comprehension regarding emotional and physical maturity.
My father would often play with me and hug and kiss me. He would ask me who I loved more than anyone in the world. I would always say: "You, daddy." I think I said this more out of fear than out of love; or maybe I felt compelled to say it so that I would not hurt his feelings. But the truth is that I always loved my mother most. This brought me to the realization that children may often say things that they do not mean. A child can be confused as to how to answer. And most answers are constructed in a way in which the child says something that he believes the adult wants to hear.
One day, my father told my mother that he was very ill and would have to go into the hospital. He told my mother that it would be better for us to stay with my grandmother until he got better. The night before we were to leave, I remember kneeling down and praying. As a child my parents always taught us to pray. It was the type of prayer familiar to most children who learn how to pray and ask God to bless mommy and daddy, brothers and sisters and a whole litany of people who came to mind. But that night my prayer was definitely different. It came from my heart. That was the beginning of knowing God, truly as being my Father. Perhaps he knew that I was about to lose mine. I realize now that as a child, poignant events and circumstances often thrust a child into a completely different level of existence. These events affect the maturity of the child, whether in a good way or adversely. I cannot particularly remember being sad when we got to the train station. And I don't remember either even if my father kissed me or said goodbye or said that he would miss me. What the heck, he told us that he would be with us in two weeks.
Getting to grandma's house was exciting, it was a three day trip, and my mother was very brave to have taken on such an adventure with so many kids. Being at grandma's house was strange and different. Different people, no friends, different weather, lots of snow and people talked different. It did not take too long before I started asking mommy about daddy. I missed him and wanted to go home. My mother would speak to him on the phone every so often and she kept a dresser drawer full of his letters. Then one day the phone calls stopped and the letters stopped coming. All of a sudden my father just seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Seeing my mother go through so much pain, sorrow and anguish was unbearable for me. Every night she would kneel down at the foot of her bed and shed what seemed to be a river of tears. She would weep and wail and beg God to take her so that she would not feel the pain. I think the only thing that gave her strength were her children. She had to go on for us. This is when I realized that I had to be the man of the house, but I was only eight years old. But by being the oldest of my brother and sisters, becoming leader came naturally.
For years I waited for my father to show up. This caused me great pain. I needed him. Maybe I did something wrong to make him go away. But, maybe it was the times he would tell me that I should be seen and not heard. Heck, I did not even know what that meant and he would tell it too me so many times. Well time would go on and I would dream at night and daydream in the day and watch the door to the classroom at school just knowing or maybe just hoping that the next time the door opened, it would be my father. Do you know what so many years of empty hope and seeing the tears and weeping of my mother does to a child? Well I changed. Besides the changing of waiting and hoping to anger and bitterness towards my father, I became stronger. By this time my mother was working what seemed to be two jobs, but maybe it was only one and seemed like two because she was gone for so long. By the age of twelve, I had my first job as a paper boy. I would get up at 4:30am to have the papers delivered by 6am. I would get home and iron my brother and sisters clothes so that they could get ready for school. I wanted to relieve my mother of as much work as I could. By the time I would get home from school, I would rally all of my brother and sisters around the table. This was our family forum. Of course mommy was not there because she was at work. This is where I dished out all of the chores. I would wash the dishes, Maria would dry them, Daniel would clean the bathroom, (I think he hated that and felt slighted as to his choices in tasks), and Yolanda would clean the ashtrays, (given that at the time my mother was a smoker who could not stop even though we would make her promise on the bible). I would even try my hand at cooking. One day I tried my creativity by convincing my brother and sisters that garlic toast was so good. I turned on the oven and buttered some bread; I think it must have been a whole loaf. I poured on top of the bread what must have been a whole bottle of garlic salt. I proceeded to toast it in the oven and then served it as if it were some sort of delicacy. Well you could probably imagine the reaction of my brother and sisters after taking the first bite. I don't think I had the pleasure of taking the first bite when everyone was crying: "yuck!" Mommy happened to come home shortly afterwards and saw the whole loaf of bread toasted in the oven. I think she made us eat the whole loaf. I don't think that my brother and sisters eat garlic toast to this very day because of that experience. The relevance of relating this story is to demonstrate how resourceful children can be and how quickly they are forced to mature because of life circumstances.
Adolescence
Twelve was an important age for me because it was the age at which I started seeking truth. What is truth? Where could I find it? Well, I knew that it was with God, but how does he dispense with it? I searched. I am the product of a mixed religious family. My father was Catholic, my mother and grandmother, evangelical Christians and my grandfather...well, I never saw him go to church. My mother tells me that his family escaped the concentration camps during the holocaust. Well, I kept searching, every religious belief under the sun. Even though my mother invited me to go to church with her often, I did not feel that fire within me until I sought on my own. And then on Holy Saturday, the Vigil of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus, I was baptized into the Holy Catholic Church. It seemed strange that my father still had influence on me even though he was not around. My grandmother hated the idea that I was catholic. I would go to mass everyday and often when I would get home; my grandmother would be waiting for me with an electrical cord. She would take me to the basement and tell me that she did not whip clothes. I know that my grandmother loved me; there is no doubt in my mind. She was just trying to correct me from what she perceived as errant ways. But the more she whipped me, the more I would go to mass. I still bear the stripes on my back. I had no idea that I was bearing the cross of Christ. All I knew was that I was in love with Christ. Nothing could stop me from feeling that joy that I felt every time I went to receive communion. I was so overjoyed that I would have to run all the way home, even though what I was running to was another whipping. Finally my grandmother gave up. She conformed herself to just hiding my prayer books. In retrospect, I discover now that twelve is a very important age. Twelve is an age at which a child begins to question. He tries to find meaning to life and existence as well as purpose. There are some twelve year-olds that are forced into adulthood quickly.
I loved to hear classical music. I don't know how to explain it; but every time I would hear classical music, I would feel something similar to what I felt when I received communion. That joy and excitement that made me feel that I was bubbling over. Often when I was younger, I would imagine that my father would come out of the clouds and hug me while I was listening to classical music. That never turned into reality. Music seems to be an escape for many youngsters. Sometimes it is even more than an escape, it becomes an actual addiction. Music for me actually produced within me a natural high. I was literally on cloud nine. But what did happen was that I learned to play classical music on the piano...Beethoven (my favorite), Bach, and Chopin. I seemed to figure it out all on my own, one note at a time. I spent hours upon hours playing the piano. It was like a religious experience. This is when I was convinced that God was in classical music. Finally, someone noticed. I was sent to New York for an audition to learn to play with the masters. And I was accepted. Suffering seems to produce many positive effects. It builds character and patience. It also allows a person to take a healthy and humbly look at oneself in the mirror. But it also seems to bring out hidden talents and skills and allows one to discover these abilities. I spent a whole summer of learning to play concert music. That certain summer was probably one of the most important summers of my life. The music conservatory was situated next to a beautiful lake within a gated community. I practiced five hours a day. During my free time, I spent all of my time at a Christian coffee house. Even at twelve years old, a child is able to focus and channel his talents and abilities. Under certain circumstances a child may be as focused as an adult, and sometimes even more so. Everyone there was college age and tried their best to ship me over to the neighboring high school club, but they could not get rid of me. This was my first experience in Christian fellowship. I learned what the love of God felt like through other people. We prayed together, sang together and ate together. What a wonderful feeling. I adopted a couple there to be my parents, Tom and Janet. They were good friends with each other and brothers in Christ, but to me, they were my father and mother. I felt secure, at home and loved. Since my father disappeared, this was the first paternal figure I had in my life and this was meaningful to me. That love of God the Father, through Jesus our Lord and his holy people the saints was finally embodied. People hugged me and loved me sincerely. O, how I needed their hugs. I learned to love and pray deeply that summer. My journey as a catholic Christian had just begun. I had the better of two worlds, the truth of the Holy Catholic Church and the deep expression and love of the evangelical church. That summer prepared me for the journey of the rest of my life.
At the age of fourteen, I was accepted to several private college preparatory schools. Choosing which one to attend turned out to be one of the most difficult decisions in my whole life. At each, I had been granted a full scholarship for four years including room and board. But after having chosen, those four years proved to be the most wonderful and most memorable four years of my youth. Up until that point, I was a shy and timid young man. The absence of my father continually affected me. I was constantly teased and ridiculed by others up until then. And no one even knew my suffering. I suffered alone. But after commencing my new school (which was a boarding school), I finally felt accepted. The school was an all-boys school which was strict on tradition, responsibility and discipline. The school was situated in the middle of a forest with a lake in the middle. The campus was beautiful. And most of its graduates proceeded on to Ivy League schools. A requirement for graduation was to participate in their outward-bound program which occurred during our sophomore year. This is when I made an incredible discovery. We had to spend two weeks in the woods learning survival techniques. One of our tasks was to cross a gorge from one cliff to another over a line that had a river far below. We were geared up with a harness; one by one we had to throw ourselves out over the river hanging from the line and slide over to the other side. That first step was the scariest. Because of the slack in the line, we would fall several feet before you began to slide. This is when I realized that we were all the same, the athletic as well as the timid of heart. We were all the same. The only difference was the grandeur of the masks. That day, no one had masks. We all cried and were afraid. What a realization, everyone cried.
One night at about two o'clock in the morning, I could not sleep and found myself crying uncontrollably. And I went to the hall of the dormitory to call my mother. She asked me what was wrong, but all I could tell her was that I didn't know. She sensed that I had sensed something for she knew something that I did not yet know. It is interesting and often uncanny the intuition that children possess, even though a child may not be able to discern and understand the meaning of his intuition. The school knew, the rest of my family knew, but I did not know. That day, the assistant headmaster called me into his office. They had not wanted to tell me until final exams were over. I went home that weekend. My mother and grandmother were sitting around the kitchen table with my brother and sisters standing near. Before my mother could get a word out, my sister took me aside and told me that daddy had been killed. I am sure no one was prepared for my reaction, not even I. I clapped my hands and jumped with glee. What was this? Why did I react so? Well, I'll tell you. It was the culmination of witnessing my mother's pain and tears over seven years. It was all the times that I waited for my father to walk through that door. It was for the times when I needed a father and he was not there. It was for all the times I had to lie and say that my father was dead and now it was true. It was for all those times I blamed myself for my father's absence. I don't feel good for reacting that way, but there is only so much pain that a young boy can bear. I'm not sure, but for some reason, I felt free.
Dark Night of the Soul
The next couple of years I experience tremendous spiritual growth. By then, I had already read the bible and also The Imitation of Christ, by St Thomas Kempis. And also The Way of a Pilgrim and other works influenced tremendously my growth such as: The Dark Night of the Soul by St John of the Cross and works by St Theresa of Avila. During this whole time, I had been tremendously influenced by my Godmother, Florence. She taught me to love and praise God in the Spirit. She would always teach me to obey God's law above man's law, and to praise God in all things.
Once while in the sanctuary, I was reading the gospel of St Matthew. I had read this passage what seemed to be hundreds of times, but until now it had not affected me in the manner that it did then. The passage reads: "All sins will be forgiven you, even sins against the son of man, but the sin against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven you neither in this life nor in the next." For some reason this passage hit me hard. Maybe it was because I had been deep in prayer. This was the beginning of another stage in my life. During this time I was haunted with the command: "Know thyself." This was truly a humbling experience for what I saw was not pleasant. That garden whereby seeds of love of God and neighbor had been planted along with self-giving and sacrifice, had been invaded by weeds of thorns such as pride, self-pity and longing to be loved. It would take the next several years weeding this garden. This was definitely a painful experience. Looking so deeply into myself caused me much anguish. I passed through a period of self-resentment and to top it all, I was convinced that I was bound for hell because of the bible verse I had read. What was the sin of the Holy Spirit? No one really knew and I asked a great many scholars and clergy. I just knew that whatever it was, I had committed it. One thing I did realize was that I did not love God for only the promise of heaven; rather I loved him for himself. Even though I just knew that I was condemned. I still prayed and I told him that even if he sent me to the depths of hell, I would still love him. I would tell him that I would grab onto his big toe and hold on and not let go. This anguish that I suffered lasted for about a year and a half. During this time I was unable to eat or sleep and ended up looking more like a skeleton than I do now. I suffered from deep depression and sever anxiety attacks. But I never lost my faith. On the contrary, my faith was strengthened.
After I emerged from this valley of tears, I was another. I was stronger, yet more tender and even more understanding than I had been before. I saw things in a new light. By now I had gone off to college and far away from my mother. This was the first time I was so far from her, and I missed her enormously. For five months I mourned our separation. During this time I perceived my mother in a whole new light. She was no longer just my mother whom I had perceived as having responsibility for caring for and loving me. She was a person, a human being who has feelings, who laughs and cries. She was a person who was once young too and who went through all phases of life. One time she came to visit me and she actually wanted to go with me to the beach and walk in the sand. That was one of the most beautiful moments I had shared with her. My mother and I actually share a special bond. I can sense things in her and she can sense them in me. Even though we may be thousands of miles apart, she knows when I am sick and I know when she is sick. As a matter of act, I often experience her same symptoms that she is feeling. This got me in trouble once when I was two years old. My mother was pregnant with my sister Maria and she would let me feel her tummy when the baby was kicking. I perceived this as hurting my mother and my own stomach began to hurt. My father thought that I was faking just to get out of eating my dinner, but he made a big mistake. He spanked me anyway.
It's strange to see that even though I had not seen my father since I was eight years old, his absence still affected me. I felt cheated. I looked for father figures throughout my whole life and could not bear to hear about men who cheated on their families. This made me angry. During my time at my college prep school, I gained a voice and learned to speak up about things that were on my mind. Anytime something would remind me of my father, I ached, thinking more on the suffering and pain it caused my mother. But this is what makes me the man I am today, a loving father, one who would sacrifice his life for his children; a father which I never had.
Anxiety Attacks
The symptoms appeared long before I even knew the cause. It was a sudden fear, a sense of dying, a terrible anguish, it was what I later discovered was an anxiety attack. I do not know what was worse, whether it was the queasiness in my stomach with the constant threat of throwing up or if it was the feeling that I could not breath, or if it was the sense that I was dying. Some kind of way they were all related, and the absence of one gave me no greater comfort because the others were intensified all the much more. The queasiness seemed to be constant. It was so much so that I thought it to be a normal and daily part of life. Just the smell of food made me feel ill. I was in so much distress and I did not even know why. One symptom seemed to trigger another. The queasiness triggered a terrible anxiety and panic. It felt as if someone had just flipped a switch and it would just start. I would feel a sudden flash of heat in my body especially my face. I felt as if someone had thrown me into a furnace or into a pot of boiling water. My first reaction was one of panic and awful fear. My heart pounded furiously. My first reaction was to jump up and run, run as far and as fast as I could. It did not alleviate my distress too much at the moment, but at least I did something. It was not something I had to meditate or ponder upon. It just happened. I had to run. And as much as I hate to admit it because I feel embarrassed to say, but I had to scream and yell. The screaming and yelling I was able to stifle until I was at a safe distance from civilization and from those who would swear that I was crazy if they heard me. Earlier I had mentioned that the running did not help, but looking back in retrospect, it actually did. Nothing in that terrible moment seems to make any sense. But the running and yelling did help a bit.
The sense of not being able to breathe was awful. The greater I felt the need of air, the more I would try to breathe, faster and faster. And the more I would breathe the more air I seemed to lack. My face would start to tingle as well as my hands and feet. It felt as if someone were sticking a thousand needles through my body. Then everything seemed to go black.
I was in constant fear and was very nervous. I needed someone to hold onto. The person who seemed to be around the most to help me through my ordeal was my mother. I would hug her tightly and I held on so much that afterwards my poor mother’s arms were black and blue.
Perceived Causes
This next part is where I want to share what I perceived as causes. They may not have been the actual causes, but are what made sense to me at the time. As time passes and as I mature, I have been able to reflect and ponder; I have gained even more insight into my illness. It must have started with those dreams I used to have as a baby. Yes, I meant to say baby. I remember that I was still in the crib when I had these dreams. It is interesting to note that these are the only dreams I can remember having as a baby. These dreams were clouds, the round puffy kind that were ever so slightly elongated and had puffy bulges all around. They had ugly menacing faces and would come through my window and eat me. I remembered this and figured out that there was a connection long after my illness was gone. I am not sure what the connection would be exactly, but I know that there is a connection. The next perceived cause was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I was seven years old and my mother would make me lunch every day. One day she made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. I ate it during lunch time at school. Afterwards, I felt drowsy and queasy. By the time school was out, I could barely move. I walked home and as soon as I walked through the door, I threw up all over the stairs. My mother scolded me and told me to get out of the house. I ran and hid behind a parked vehicle where she could not find me. Now of course my mother did not mean what she said. She was just upset because of the big mess I had made and she had to clean up. She eventually came out to look for me, but I still hid from her for a while. By the time I was ten, there were other things that would cause me to experience those awful anxiety attacks and thus go through my queasy stomach feeling. One cause, interestingly enough, was the weather. Whenever it would get cloudy, this is when I would feel queasy and go through my anxiety attack. Finally, enough was enough. Whether, consciously or unconsciously, I decided to do something about it. My solution was to stop eating. I still had to deal with my anxiety attacks, but at least my queasiness could not cause me to throw up because there was nothing to throw up. My stomach was always empty. Well obviously this all would eventually have its consequences. By the time I was sixteen, I was weighing a mere eighty-nine pounds. Now things had really escalated. It started by self-imposed eating regulations and abstinences and fasts, such as, not eating after 6pm. I definitely abstained from peanut butter and from all peanut products for that fact. Then I fasted from all pork and then from meat altogether. Finally, I was down to just bread and water. I consumed a total of a half piece of bread a day and four ounces of water. Now the queasiness and the hunger pangs were practically indistinguishable. Whenever I would eat more than a half piece of bread and four ounces of water, I would experience my anxiety attack. This caused a complete fear of eating altogether.
Manifestations
Now, all of these experiences were becoming deep and even spiritual. Besides having a deep fear of eating, I experienced a terrible emotional and spiritual anguish. Anytime I would try to eat, I felt a terrible guilt as if I had committed a mortal sin. I then perceived my resulting anxiety attack as punishment for my sin and would cry out for forgiveness proclaiming as my defense that I was hungry.
I think the forty days of Lent and Holy Week were the worst because I would go to confession and my confessor knowing my strife would give me as penance to eat for Jesus. So I would really try knowing what was waiting for me after each attempt. I felt like I was in a viscous circle; I die if I do and I die if I don’t. What I still do not understand fully if why I felt so much self-hatred. I would not stand to look at myself in the mirror. Sometimes I wonder which started first, my self-hatred or my fear of eating. It sometimes makes sense to me to think that I stopped eating because of some self-imposed penance, some sort of atonement for some sin that I had not the slightest idea of what it might have been. Whatever it was, I just knew that I had committed it. Whatever started this vicious circle, I was willing to try to take control. The one good that came out of all of this was prayer. I do not think that there could have been another living being that prayed as hard and heartfelt as I did. I sincerely learned what true humility is. I was being humbled and broken every moment and was constantly depending on the mercy of God. During this whole time, I was in a state of deep depression. I felt as if I were in a deep hole and no one could get me out; and that hole was just getting deeper. I guess the most obvious manifestation was my appearance. I was gaunt and frail. I must have looked like a walking skeleton. As you can imagine, this did not help any for my self-esteem. I shied away from people. I was so embarrassed for people to even look at me. Can you imagine going through all of this and still being in high school? None of this helped my grades any. It was difficult for me to concentrate just thinking of when my next episode would be. No one really knew what I was going through. All my classmates knew was that the joyful, smiling kid they once knew was now skinnier than a stick and sullenly depressed.
Other Phobias
As if things could not get any worse, my fear of eating accompanied by all of its manifestations bred other phobias. The most prominent was claustrophobia. The same anxiety I felt when eating, I felt when I was in closed spaces. Things like elevators, trains, buses, locked rooms and the sort became nightmares for me. How could any of this possibly be related to a fear of eating? Well, I am not a therapist, but I would venture to say that it all goes back to those nightmarish dreams of those ugly monster clouds that would eat me when I was a baby. The fear of eating now triggered a dormant monster that was just waiting to be awakened. Being in closed situations now triggered the same physical and emotional responses as eating; anxiety, queasiness and all.
Still even more phobias that were spawned and that manifested themselves were fear of being alone and fear of the dark. L This terrible monster was growing and now had several heads. I was being eaten alive and being torn apart and no one could help me. I was alone.
Healing Process
Finally, someone recognized that I needed help. My mother saw the anguish that I was suffering and really tried to help me. I am not sure who suffered more; I or my mother who watched her son endure unbearable anguish. She really tried to help. I think she thought it was all nerves, especially since she is a very nervous person. She would give me some of her tranquilizer pills. I would carry them around with me but I never took them. Just the idea of having them in my pocket helped a lot; just knowing that I had a way out made me able to bear the pain that much more. I am sort of glad I never took them. I realize now how easy it would be for someone to fall into an addiction. When one feels pain or anguish and discovers a way to alleviate that pain, a person will continue to seek the remedy of that pain. The interesting point is that nothing will permanently destroy that pain except for dealing with it head-on and without masking it.
Finally, I landed in the hospital. Right after admitting me, the hospital doctors and staff made me take off all of my clothes in a cold, dark room where they commenced a whole documentary of pictures. I felt humiliated knowing that I was probably going to be part of some sort of medical study and be included in some kind of medical archives. I was just hoping that they would at least blur out my face in pictures. My actual healing process began when I moved away from home and went off to college. I have never experienced an anxiety attack since. Oftentimes a person tries to find meaning to the pain, anguish and anxiety that he is feeling; and many times never finds an answer. As one matures and life’s experiences are augmented, sometimes things just seem to fall into place. And we are the better for it.
