Greetings.
My name is Hank, and I am 30 years old. I want to share my
story with you. I was born in abject poverty, and to make
things worse, I was deemed legally blind at an early age. My
mom did not really understand my eye condition, and we had no
money, therefore medical attention was not readily available.
Even though it was hard for me to keep up in school--due to
the fact that I could barely see--I did somehow manage to get
a scholarship to college and earn two degrees.
The
events of my childhood--abuse, poverty, and neglect, and also
the feeling of never really belonging, caused me to have many
bouts with depression. Depression robs you of your life, and I
feel that I have been cheated out of ten years of my life
because of mental illness. I guess the cause is that I did not
like me, and I did not want others to like me too. And since I
did not like me, and since others did not like me, then that
made me not like myself more. In the past I have resorted to
cutting myself, and there have been a few attempts at suicide.
There was a span of a year and a half when I hated to see the
sun rise, for I knew that it was another day that I was
alive--another day to live in pain.
The
good news is that now I am happy, and now I have dreams and
goals, and that used to not be the case. The greatest therapy
session I have ever had was writing my book of love poems.
I
knew from an early age that I was more sensitive than others,
and I had a gift of expressing words through writing. I used
my experiences to donate half of the proceeds from my book to
the Salvation Army. I want to help my city, my state, my
country, and last and certainly least, me. I thank you for
your time.
