Continuation- A Christian dealing with mental illness- I hear the steam can someone take the pot off of the fire please?

When my dad died my mother did not seek counseling for herself, my brother and I. Instead she took us to Hawaii for ten days and when you're 13 years old Hawaii didn't seem like a bad idea. While in Hawaii I didn't focus on my dad's death just enjoying the view and the many things that Hawaii offered. One day while on the trip, my mother left my brother and I to do what we wanted to do but we had to stay near the hotel so we decided to order some "virgin" pina coladas and enjoy the beautiful weather. We did a lot of things when we were in Hawaii. We saw Pearl Harbor, went to a Luau, the beach and the Dole pineapple factory. I didn't know how good pineapples were when they first came off the tree. You'd think that the grief wouldn't be too intense when we got back home but that was the opposite. When I returned back to school everyone knew that my dad had died and I felt like a celebrity telling the same story over and over. To me Hawaii only was a mask to temporarily forget the extreme loss of losing a parent. The pain came back to me with a vengeance. I felt a huge hole in my heart that would eventually become hard that I didn't think that anything could fix it and my longing for death began. My mom decided that we needed a new change in scenery so we moved after my 7th grade year to Glendale. I was so nervous to start a new school let alone an "all white" school. I wasn't prejudiced or anything just scared because I didn't know if they would accept me because of my color. My fears didn't last for long because I did make some friends but I also felt like the black sheep because there were only two black people in the entire 8th grade class! God had given me a gift to be able to sing and sing well. I joined the choir along with one of my best friends and we went to different competitions in which we had to sing a piece that we learned in front of different judges for a for an award. My friend and I got some awards and we were happy. I remember when my 8th class first heard me sing. I was in "home room" and were allowed to do anything but homework and the movie, "The Bodyguard" had just came out starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner. Whitney Houston was the "ying" to my "yang". I wanted to sing like her because her voice was like no other I had ever heard. I had brought the movie soundtrack with me and there was a song called, "I Will Always Love You". Well I started singing that song quietly to myself and one of my friends heard me sing and asked me if that was me singing and I told him no. I started quietly singing again and he turned and asked me if I was singing and I said no the second time. Finally he caught right in the middle of the hook of the song and yelled, " Tasha can sing!" I wanted to strangle him because my voice was my little secret and I wasn't ready to share that secret with the entire 8th grade! My teacher asked me if I would sing that song to the class and I was reluctant at first but the begging became too much so I did and then the crying came and the cheers. What had I done? From that moment on I never felt nor was treated the same.

Continuation: A Christian dealing with mental illness- How long will it take before the pot boils over?

The very part of sanity for myself found it's way in guys that used me for other purposes, alcohol, really dark poetry. Poetry was my voice and my demise. I expressed myself and my feelings through poetry but that was all that I used to express my feelings. I had no voice it seemed because I had no confidence. I believe and still do believe that my feelings are not worth talking about because either I take things too seriously, or I think that the person whom I am speaking to won't validate my feelings. Why should it matter right? The very air that I breathe has to do with acceptance. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings but I have a deep desire to try to please everyone because I wanted people to like me. I have carried this burden since the day after my dad's death. I tried so hard to find acceptance, I mean "true" acceptance from my mother but she never could give that back to me because she did not receive acceptance from her father. The cycle abuse does can duplicate itself throughout generations. Part of me feels sorry for my mother while the other part of me wishes that she wasn't my mother at all. We're told to accept our parent's mistakes because they "did the best that they could" well I believe that that saying is not exactly "easy" to do. My mom says that she did the best that she could but did she? She told me that she never wanted children and that I was her so-called, "Trojan Baby." What the hell is a "Trojan Baby?" I asked her what that meant and she later told me that she named me that because she used a Trojan condom and I still managed to be conceived. And you wonder why I feel like I don't belong here.Sadly after my dad died I felt a deep longing to leave with him because I didn't know who I was without him. My dad was sweet, lovable, and stern when he had to be; a people person that loved his family and most of all loved the Lord. He helped reinforce Christ in my life by not only his words but his actions as well. I remember him telling me this: "I don't think that I am going to be here too much longer but whatever you do always put God first in your life." and three days later he was gone. Everyone in this world has experienced some type of loss- more frequent than others but the degree of losing my dad was the catalyst of this catastrophic illness.