My life was shattered on that beautiful March day. It felt like it was over; the world had officially come to an end. It was at that moment that I truely began to doubt God; at least conciously. I tried not to, I over compensated and preached as much as possible, but I was in turmoil inside. After that day it seemed that even the smallest problem or set back was too much for me to handle and I spiralled out of control into a depression so deep that I could no longer see what happiness used to be. By the time December of that year came I had stood in bathroom with a handfull of pills staring into the mirror trying to think of reasons not to take them. A couple times the pills made their way into my mouth, only to be spit out after a few seconds. It all came to a climax in December of my Grade 11 year. I drafted a letter to my girlfriend at the time explaining how my guitars could be hers if anything happened to me and gave it to her thinking I wouldn't be there the next day to explain myself anyway. After school I walked home to an empty house and went straight to my room, wrapped a belt around my neck, stood up on a chair, attaching the belt to a hook in my ceiling. I then slowly let myself down off the chair until my feet were dangling and for a second thought I would be dead, but something happened; the belt broke and I crashed to the ground. I heard the door open upstairs and knew the rest of my family was home and that my opportunity had presented itself and I had failed. I acted like nothing was wrong.
The next day at school I noticed that my girlfriend at the time and my best friend were not in class all morning and wondered what was going on. That afternoon I was called out of class to the guidance room where I saw them sitting in the office...God truely used them that day to save my life, but I didn't see it then. I was sent to a group home over Christmas where I wasn't even allowed to where a belt unsupervised and went to group sessions as well as one on one with a "shrink" as they say. I was diagnosed almost instantly with clinical depression (I guess losing your best friend to suicide and not being able to deal with it couldn't have caused this depression) and was put on drugs. I found myself telling God I hated him more and more as this time went on. This had to be His fault...it HAD TO BE. I was looking for anything to help fill this hole that seemed to be forming in my heart. I hoped that my life would start to become normal again, but somehow knew that I was in for a bumpy ride.
My parents finally decided that the best course of action would be to get out of the small town that raised me and we were off to Calgary; plus I had a girlfriend who lived in Edmonton so i was all for it. I survived my Grade 12 year in Calgary and God surrounded me with so many people that I just pushed away as quickly as I could as I was not interested in meeting anyone and was soley interested in the girl in edmonton. I had high grades all through high school and could have made it into any school I wanted to, but for some reason felt that a girl was more important then that...oh to know what I know now back then. I wasn't even out of high school one month when I moved to Edmonton, telling my parents that I had a job and place to stay when in reality I had no job and no home. I lucked out and never had to sleep on the street, but still didn't have a place to call my home. Sleeping in a different bed almost every night I finally got a job at a plumbing supply store. My boss was a jerk, but it was a job and it paid the bills even though I was making minimum wage and a guy who happened to be a friend of the owner's with less experience them me ended up getting hired and was being paid quite a bit more then I was I stayed on for a while. I had also joined a hardcore/punk band known as Strength in Solitude who's members were Christian and as I was calling myself Christian still I was invited to join the band. After a few months I quit my job at the plumbing store and was hired on at the University of Alberta Bookstore (still one of the best jobs I have ever had!). Strength in Solitude's popularity was growing and we had just released a new album around the same time as well. Things seemed to be looking up as we had a few record labels wanting to hear more from us and were planning a north american tour. As these things were looking up, my relationship with my girlfriend was going down hill fast. It seemed we broke up once a month and got back together a couple days later and I was beginning to question my beliefs more and more each day. We finally had a month long tour booked and I had been given a leave of absense from work for the tour. I saved everything I possibly could to pay the bills while I was gone and took care of everything I could beforehand. The girlfriend and I were talking about marriage and were going to meet up when we were stopped in Toronto as she would be there at the same time with a friend who later would become a very good friend of mine. So we embarked on our tour with no idea as to what to expect. We survived to Toronto without killing eachother and had a couple good shows with no money to speak for it and were very thankful for the large condo we stayed at with our soon to be good friend Jordan. My girlfriend and I solidified our plans to marry when we got back to edmonton at the end of the month and the day after our show I drove her to the airport for her to fly home. We played montreal, ottawa and rochester (NY) and came back to toronto to find out all our other east coast shows had been canceled. Homeless in toronto. Awesome. A fellow edmonton band named Choke was heading back home across canada after touring with a band named AFI and invited us to play out the rest of their tour with them so we could make it home. (GOD?). A couple new fuel pumps, an altinator and a few tow trucks later we were back in edmonton and home. My life changed, my girlfriend gone and all but 300 bucks in the wind. I had a couple weeks left on my leave of absence and since I no longer had a girlfriend in Edmonton I went to Calgary to see my family. It was wonderful, but then my ex-girlfriend messaged me on the blasted internet and I was hooked again and we decided to move to winnipeg. I will cut out most of the story here and just cut to the drama and the end of that stint in winnipeg. We were living with a couple "friends" and my girlfriend invited a friend from st.louis out to stay with us. She wasn't working and was home alone with him all the time, she was sleeping in the living room instead of in our room and would refuse to go to my grandparents' for lunch. I thought nothing of it, only to find out that she was cheating on me (duh...). In all this I had declared my disbelief in God. I mean he wasn't taking care of me and I wasn't getting my way, so he must not exist and I made that very well known. I didn't hate God...he didn't exist.
To Be Continued...
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