He told me to watch the movie "A Walk to Remember." It was a cute romantic movie. I didn't understand his fascination with the movie until one day when I went to visit him at his parent's house. He looked at me and said, "I'm sick." I knew he didn't mean like a physical ailment, but one of those mysterious unclassified type of "mental" disorders (for lack of a better term). A severe depression, moodiness and melancholy hit him. The world became a dark and fearful place for him. Fear and paranoia hit him hard. It was really sad to see because he loved God. He even baptized me that summer in a river. But he had this "monkey on his back" that seemed to be just there coming out of nowhere.
He was having symptoms of Schizophrenia. I would search the Internet reading descriptions of the disorder and he seemed to be having every symptom. I was a friend to Alex long before I ever was a girlfriend so my loyalty as a friend for his well-being kicked in and I was determined to get him help. I had already raised disabled children so I came from a framework of understanding people with what they call "psychiatric" or "cognitive" difficulties.
At first I looked at this as a brain problem or a complex biological problem. I thought that maybe it was hereditary or in his genetics. I had already had a lot of genetic testing done on my own children and due to that I knew a few things. Doctors had found a genetic mutation in my genes as well as my children. They found a mutation on Chromosome Seven. They told me that it was linked to depression but they could not figure out what genetic mutation caused autism. Much of it was a mystery. I didn't suffer from depression myself but apparently I was a genetic carrier of this problem according to the doctor.
Life had dealt a cruel hand to my friend Alex. How was he ever supposed to have his dreams fulfilled and have a wife and little family of his own if he could barely function? I thought that I could be a wife to him and go that extra mile to give him half a chance in this life. Everyone deserves to have someone if possible. I understood what it was like to be an outcast in society. I was looked at strangely in public whenever I went anywhere with my children because of their odd behavior. I loved Alex and had a lot of patience with him. He had become my very best friend.
Yet my best friend was suffering horribly. One time when I went to visit him I found him hiding in his bedroom closet. I gently coaxed him to come out. Although he was almost forty years old, he looked as if he had regressed to be about four years old and asked me in a tiny voice, "Are you going to hurt me?" I took his hand as if he was a little child and assured him that I was there to help him and that it was safe to come out. By the end of my visit he would beg me to stay fearing what would happen to him once I left.
​ He was plagued with accusation of past sins, regret, fear, anger, paranoia, anxiety, depression and nightmares. He also heard voices. These voices would always be degrading him. He told me that sometimes the voices would have nonsense conversations back and forth with one another. From time to time he'd also see hallucinations. Agoraphobia gripped him too, which is fear of going out of the house. He was literally afraid to go out of his front door. He'd look out his window and say, "The trees are waving at me." As if something was haunting him.
​ He tried hard to explain his nightmarish world to me. He said that something would bring him into another dimension and he'd not even feel like he was here anymore and in that dimension he would experience something like imagining people were beating him or sodomizing him. The nightmarish scenes varied. But being trapped in a mental hospital and being abused was a constant theme and fear of his. He spiraled so far down in fear, terror and despair that he would only go out of his house when I came to visit him.
​ Changes happened to his mind suddenly as well. All of a sudden noises became too loud. He could barely tolerate being outside for long due to the noise of running cars or people mowing their lawns. The smells were even worse. He could not tolerate the smell of perfume, engine emissions, hair spray or even food smells. He felt so sick upon smelling these things.
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