TW: My journal.

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Hello peoples. My name is Danny. Very little about me, or my life, has made much sense, even before I was born. I don't remember any of that, but I heard the story a lot when I was little. My mother was pregnant for 13 months, she always assumed she must have miscarried and got pregnant again, but it would have been hard to tell when, since she didn't miss a menstrual cycle the whole time. Every time she went to the doctors they told her she was pregnant with perfectly healthy twins, possibly triplets. Nobody questioned that, because her great grandmother, and my dad's grandfather were both twins. In the end however, after 36 hours in labour, and an emergency C-section once they realized the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck, there was only ten pounds and thirteen ounces of me. 

When the doctors rushed my mom into the C-section, they told the rest of my family that the odds were slim that either of us would survive (mom and I), and asked who they should focus on. My dad was famously quoted as telling the doctor 'you damn well better save them both, or my wife won't be the only person on an operating table today'. Apparently it was enough, because we both survived. Although they said I'd probably be a vegetable, or severely developmentally challenged, because of how long my brain was without oxygen, and my mother was left with a wicked scar where they cut her stomach muscles, that still to this day can burst open if she tries to lift too much weight.

My earliest clear memory came at the age of three. My sister and I were playing on the porch of the house I grew up in. The house was old, dilapidated, and mostly falling in. It was actually condemned before I was born, but it was all my family could afford to rent on my dads disability check. There was a loud creak, a cracking sound, and the corner post of the porch broke off the edge. As it fell, my mother caught it, and yelled for us to get off the porch. My sister had to drag me out, I was frozen in place, staring at mom, because when she caught the weight of the roof, her scar immediately busted open and she was just as quickly covered in blood.

My dad rushed out to see what had happened, tied moms stomach up as best he could with his shirt, threw us in the car and headed for the hospital. On the way there, my sister who at the time was seven, said "this is all your fault", having heard the story of my birth, and knowing where that scar came from, to my young mind she was right.

And so, with my earliest memory, began my first battle with depression.

I began to feel like all the problems my family was facing (and there were many) were my fault, and that everyone would be better off had I never existed. My Granny (moms mom) picked me and my sister up at the hospital and that night, during an autumn thunderstorm I decided that since everyone would be better off without me, that I should just leave. I wandered off into the woods and hid. I don't know how long I was there, I had cried myself to sleep, but I remember Granny was soaking wet and shivering when she picked me up out of the leaves, and all I could think was "great, now I've caused another problem"

Me and Granny both got sick. I remember feeling like it was my fault that Granny was sick, made me feel much worse than anything the bronchial pneumonia was dishing out. A few days later, at the hospital, I was being swapped back and forth between a tub of ice, and heating pads. My temperature kept skyrocketing, and then bottoming out, and they were trying to keep it in safe ranges while they figured out what was wrong. I was in and out of consciousness and don't remember much from that day, although I would hear the story. I was having an entirely different experience. That day, inside my fever-ridden mind, I was 'remembering' two completely different lifetimes. Whether they were a complete fabrication of delirium and imagination, I can't say for sure. I never could prove, or disprove, anything I 'remembered' that day, but it forever changed my perspective and gave me a whole new laundry list of reasons to be depressed, and to hate myself. I think the experience had such a profound affect of me, because prior to it, and at no time since, have I ever 'seen' anything with my eyes closed. Yet the things I experienced at that time, were indistinguishable from every waking experience I'd had.

There's a lot of experience to unpack there, arguably more than I have accumulated in my life since. Although it plays a big part in my life, it's not the story I'm trying to tell right now, and I'll probably get around to it at some point.

For most of the next year (and my whole life really), I poured myself into studying everything I could get my hands on, to try and make sense of that experience. However, getting things to study was difficult, as my family lived in extreme poverty. I was also dealing with the challenges that arose from that, my depression, and my health, which has never been that great. I was sickly as a child, which afforded me lots of time to read, when I wasn't trying to help out around the house. As I mentioned, we lived in extreme poverty, we didn't have running water or indoor plumbing at our house, or at Grannys. So pulling water up from the well was a necessity, as was helping tend the garden, and gathering and stacking firewood in the summer, and bringing it into the house in the winter. My dad was disabled (epilepsy) and mostly stayed too drunk to function. His alcoholism made his epilepsy worse, but I understood, even then, that he was hiding from his own depression, which stemmed from his inability to provide for his family.

Not only did I blame myself for a lot of the troubles we faced (and many things that plagued my mind from those 'memories'), but my sister also blamed me for our situation. She was four when I was born, and our family had to move into the condemned house we lived in. Before that, they had lived in a small apartment with indoor plumbing, and so things had gotten much worse for her when I came along.

She frequently told me that our poor living situation was because of me, and that they were better off before I was born. As if I didn't tell myself that enough. She also started trying to poison me around that time. She would dip my toothbrush in random chemicals, or scrub nasty things with it. She gave me chemicals to drink, or put them in my food, or gave me things to eat, that nobody should be eating. Those things probably didn't help with my being sick all the time. But I felt that I deserved them, so I didn't tell on her, even when I caught her doing them.

I don't remember learning to read, write, or do arithmetic. These were things I already did at three years old when I developed long term memories. I am grateful to my family for ensuring that I had those gifts, even though there were a lot of things we couldn't have. My Papal was one of the smartest people I ever knew, despite only having a third grade education. His knowledge and insight helped me to cope with a lot of what I was dealing with.