Right here, right now is the most important time in my life. Now is the time to accumulate all my experiences. I have lived an amazing journey, and I rejoice that I have prevailed and have not lost my joy for life. I have experienced the joy of victory and the agony of defeat, and I know that the Creator ordered my steps to understand the value of serving him.
I enjoy the time that I spend with the Creator. I am, by nature, an introspective person, and the inner workings of my mind come with comfort and delight. There was a time when my journey inwardly was consumed with emotional conflict, which precipitated my first bipolar episode—reflecting on my inner workings and the stroll through my mind. I learned how to navigate and create a path for myself.
Not knowing how to deal with your thoughts and feelings can be a recipe for disaster, unleashing unbridled thoughts that can disturb your psyche. How you think and how you feel as an inexperienced individual, not knowing how to deal with yourself, would ultimately lead to the person of consciousness that I am. I shout from the rooftop, my experiences consistent with a minister’s profound words.
A minister’s words of a profound nature resonate through my mind: “The Creator will put you in a situation, bring you out of it, then put you back there to help others.” In the midst of adversity, you may not see the forest for the trees. But with my spiritual maturity, I see that the adversity brought out the diamond in the rough, revealing an understanding of life.
Having mental health challenges as a young adult thrust me into the mental health system. It’s what I became, and the insight from being a client and, ultimately, working in a clinical setting, from that vantage point. A book gives you awareness, but to know how it feels and to know the clinical language and words to communicate to others, it was worth it.
It’s amazing, this is the timeline, fifty years ago I am downtown, and it was 47 years ago since my last episodic. At this moment, I am in a movie theater watching Midnight Express, which features a scene set in a mental institution in Turkey. I thought Northville was a challenge; it was the conditions when they say the bottom has a trap door. Turkey displayed here that even the trapdoor has a trapdoor. It could always be worse.
It was in Northville that I saw what my life could be like if I didn’t change. I also saw that my life was not as difficult as it was. Even more important was the revelation that I wanted to work with people who had mental illness. Not knowing that my life could turn around, I felt so low in spirit. When it was time for discharge, the social worker came to tell me. I responded that I was not ready to go, and she reassured me that I would be okay.
After discharge, my brother and his wife were key players in my rehabilitation. Years later, the crack epidemic ravaged my family and the impact that it had on the Black Community; they were casualties. I am amazed by my life, and I will not take anything for granted on my journey. As I record my life, I have always been encouraged to write a book. Writing a book at this time in my life has produced a product distinct from the book itself.
Writing for me became a great opportunity to experience a person who was unaware of the power of the word that comes alive in you. There is another world inside of you that is activated and awakens the sleeping giant in you. In the biblical lore, we are encouraged to believe in the indwelling Spirit that resides in you.
The Creator will give you the desires of your heart, and we have not because we ask not. I reference in my writings that my original goal task to serve others in the capacity of a mental health professional. What we see as adversity, the Creator uses to show his might. It took going to the bottom of the valley to the top to shout about the mercy and blessings of the Creator.
I can attest to the fact that we serve an awesome Creator who is in charge of everything that exists, the entirety of the cosmos, and beyond—the Creator, who is omnipresent and also dwells in me. I am here at this appointed time, and my calling was qualified through the restoration of my mind twice, as my dear brother Abdul would say, I became a better person because of my experiences. Consistent with the notion that what the adversary meant for my destruction, the Creator meant for my good.