It was a perfect summer night, so we decided to take a walk. Alex looked very troubled and stressed. "Alex, what's the matter? You look really tense and stressed out."
As we talked he began to tell me of an event that happened to him years ago which frightened him. "I was very sick and didn't know why. My mother took me to a doctor that humiliated me and told my mother, 'There's nothing wrong with your son, it's all in his head.' But I felt this horrible pain in my back and my body ached all over. My coordination was poor and I had trouble walking. At times I had trouble breathing. I couldn't concentrate and I felt cold all the time. I kept searching the Internet to find out what was wrong. I thought it might be my kidneys or my digestive system. All my joints hurt."
He paused to closely study his hands, turning them over from front to back and wanting me to examine them. "Don't you see? Something's wrong! My skin doesn't look right. I don't feel good in my body." His hands and skin looked perfectly fine to me. I wondered if he was a hypochondriac.
He continued, "One day it was really horrible and I fainted right in the living room . My parents called an ambulance. They took me by ambulance and they did testing on me in the hospital. "
As he related this to me I could hear the anguish and bewilderment in his voice, "When they released me from the hospital I was walking down one sidewalk with some staff people and my family was walking the other way. I didn't understand why I could not go with my family. I did not know where they were taking me. Then I was taken to a treatment center. I was put in the center for three months."
I was really perplexed by this myself wondering if he had some hidden health problem. At least for now he was fine, but as he talked about his past experiences, he had such dread. He described something really frightening after he was in the center, "I was given a mattress to sleep on which was placed on the floor. Each morning when I woke up I could hear crows cawing outside my window." Then he motioned towards his chest saying, "Then it felt like my soul was being torn up inside."
I had known Alex over the Internet off and on for about eight years prior to meeting him. He was a person who was always struggling with unknown ailments, fears, and strange phenomenon. He described such things as feeling as if his spirit was being dragged to the floor when he tried to sleep at night. To alleviate himself of this horrible feeling he would often sleep on the floor. His concentration was poor. He would complain that he could only hear parts of the sentences I spoke when I talked to him over the Internet or the phone. He would often describe feeling high amounts of anxiety and fear. So much so that he would not enjoy being around people and would remain isolated in his room.
Over the course of the years I would see that he'd try to get up on his feet to do something with his life, but then be hit with oppression of all kinds. The type of oppression he had made it hard for him to have basic functioning in life. I never understood this until I met him in person.
Letter from Alex written in 2005
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