How I Started Off Alone at 18

EDIT: I’ve come back and edited this a bit as I’ve realized I have some of the dates incorrect. Bear with me as it was over a decade ago!

According to the World Health Organization, somewhere around 1 in 5 people will experience some sort of mental illness in their lifetime.

I struggle with depression.

I’ve seen a therapist (keep reading and you’ll understand why).

I’m not ashamed of it.

The brain is an organ in the human body, that is capable of malfunctioning no differently than your pancreas can struggle to produce insulin, or your heart can struggle to beat the appropriate amount of beats per minute. Why is it then so unfathomable to some that the brain may struggle to process thoughts and emotions correctly? That the organ responsible for our perception of reality, may sometimes misfire?

Due to the lack of mental health resources in the United States, many people go years without treatment for mental illness. Years that they could’ve had somewhat of a normal life had they just gotten a push in the right direction.

My own mother was one of these people.

In 2019, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, after I pushed her to get treatment. I was old enough to see signs that something wasn’t quite right, but in all honesty, this was far overdue. I began to look back over all the years and realize that while her outward symptoms had increased in severity, the same warped perceptions of reality that caused her distress had been within her mind all this time.

Throughout my whole childhood.

Maybe before that.

Growing up in this kind of environment, nothing seems odd. The quirks are part of every day life, so nothing seems off.

It wasn’t until later in my teenage years that I realized that my life was not normal.

In the winter of 2008, I was a Junior in High school. By all appearances, life was good. I was the dude that was rad at drums, had a beautiful girlfriend, loads of friends, you name it. I was living the teenage dream.

However, life at home had really begun to unravel due to my mother’s undiagnosed mental illness. Looking back I can see that I developed a persona that I implemented in front of my friends as a coping mechanism. It was almost like being in a play. If I was acting, I could pretend that everything else didn’t exist.

My mom had let our home foreclose and waited until the last minute to do anything about it. This forced us into a situation where we had to move out very quickly.

After leaving the house I’d loved as a kid, we moved into a house that I’m pretty sure wasn’t a legal rental house. It was an absolute dump. It was an intermediary though and after a few months we moved yet again into a nicer house down the road.

We spent the summer at the new house in Hastings, and it almost felt like my life was getting back to normal for a while. However, later in the summer she began to refuse to pay rent. She would say that due to the condition of the house that she was refusing to pay. When the eviction notice was placed on our door, she assured me that it did not apply. It didn’t take a genius to know that she was lying, but I continued to put on my persona to pretend everything was okay. I lacked control in the situation.

The notice got ignored for a while. I started to spend less time at home and more time away with friends. Home started to become hostile territory. My mother was in a full-blown episode and would fly off the handle at the smallest trigger.

Around this time, my girlfriend broke up with me. I won’t go into a lot of detail on the high school drama, but with everything else going on, it certainly hurt worse than a breakup would’ve under normal circumstances. It felt less like a breakup and more like losing my best friend when I needed them the most.

I came home from school one day in November of 2009 (a senior by now) to find everything we owned being brought outside the house as if we were having a garage sale. I was humiliated. I became angry.

Saying that I was “upset” would be an understatement. I watched helplessly as someone brought my guitar out and sat it outside on the curb. I started to become enraged and began to lose my temper.

I consider what happened next to be one of defining moments of my emerging adulthood.

The officer supervising the eviction process pulled me aside to talk. Not as a policeman, but man-to-man. He told me that he recognized me from the marching band and that his daughter was part of the band as well. He told me that he thought I was a good kid and that he was going to be straight with me.

I appreciated that.

I calmed down.

Without going into detail he explained that he had reason to believe that my mom was going through a tough time mentally. She had been harassing certain people via email, sending messages that probably made sense only to her. She would even go on to be charged with misuse of telecommunications.

It was at this very moment I realized something about my mom. I couldn’t rely on her. I was on my own. At eighteen years old, without a penny to my name.

In the back of my mind, maybe I always knew it. Maybe not. Like I said before… it’s hard to know something is abnormal, when it represents “your normal”.

Once the dust settled on the eviction proceedings, my mom had a friend that helped us gather our things.

My bedroom was a storage closet next to a bathroom in an old man’s garage. It was embarrassing, but at least we weren’t on the street.

I’ve been an avid journal writer for years and this was the entry from November 21, 2009:

“Just woke up from the first night [here]. Slept pretty good. Hoping for the best today”

Here’s November 26, 2009:

“I don’t know why… but lately I’ve just been feeling really depressed. I sit here and it feels like I don’t have a reason to live. If I disappeared, I don’t think anyone would even care.”

I was trying my best to stay positive, but it was difficult.

This was the point in my life where I started to immerse myself in music and discover who Luke was. I practiced guitar until my fingers bled. I filled composition books with new song lyrics and new cadences I was writing for the school drumline.

Anything to be distracted.

On one particular night the man we were staying with decided that one of the dogs needed to go. Keep in mind that they were with us for this entire story. For a while, my dog Roxy had to go stay with a friend from the drumline.

Now not only was I stuck in a storage shed, but I had to send my best friend away. The only comforting presence I really had at the time.

At school I maintained my mask.

At the talent show (Follies) I performed my butt off. I wrote drum scores, arranged a huge production of Bohemian Rhapsody, wrote skits, etc. It might have been just a high school talent show, but I poured my emotions and creativity into that show.

I also started dating my next girlfriend at the time. Slowly but surely I was building back the high-school dream image I had before. I was section leader of the drumline, had a new beautiful girlfriend that made my ex jealous, and everything outside of home-life was good. A mask.

No one knew where I lived. I aimed to keep it that way.

I had a few close friends that knew about the struggles going on back home, but I would never fully confide in anyone at the time. After years of being raised by a mentally ill parent, I found it difficult to trust. Anything I said could be used against me at any time. Any secret I divulged would eventually be weaponized.

I couldn’t even trust my own mom, who was there to trust?

Maybe there wasn’t anyone.

Around February of 2010, my Mom started talking about getting our own place closer to school. The idea almost sounded sane. Maybe there was hope?

“Great!” I thought.

She asked her friend we were staying with for some money to help get on our feet, and put a deposit on a rental house.

The friend obliged, and then had to go out of town. While he was out of town, my mom revealed her REAL plan to me, which was to leave the state altogether and return to Texas, her former homestate.

I was done.

I was eighteen and legally able to strike out on my own, so I made plans to do just that. I asked a close friend of mine about the possibility of staying with her and her parents. Luckily, being that I was from a small town and everyone knew me, they agreed. I was never a bad kid. In early middle school I was basically the D.A.R.E. poster kid.

To this day I’m still grateful that this family took me in. It steered my life in the right direction and I will forever be grateful. If one of you is reading this (and I’m sure you know who you are) THANK YOU!

Once the plan was down, I broke the news to my mom. I would under no circumstances be accompanying her to Texas, and I would be staying in Michigan to finish my senior year of highschool.

She didn’t fight it.

It was almost hurtful how little she resisted it really.

But it didn’t change anything.

It was a cold Michigan morning when my mom and I went our separate ways.

I was supposed to be at school at band rehearsal as we had a competition the following day. The band director actually had one of my classmates call me to see where I was as I was the main snare drum player.

I told them I’d be there tomorrow, but I wasn’t feeling well that morning.

I wasn’t lying. I spent the whole day sick to my stomach from stress. I almost looked forward to her leaving, because that meant I might be able to be less stressed. I had visited with the family I’d be staying with frequently. They were far less stressful to be around than any of this was.

Plus, I knew my snare parts like the back of my hand. I’d be fine. As far as the site-reading part… its sight reading… it’s not like going for one extra rehearsal was going to make me any better at it.

We spent the better part of the morning loading anything not immediately needed into a nearby storage facility. Everything from our plates, washer, dryer, TV, etc. got packed away. I packed what I absolutely needed into the truck, as well did my mom. I went and picked Roxy up from my friends house.

She had agreed to let me keep the truck, so I at least had that. I drove her and my two dogs to the rental car store in Battle Creek. I was 18 and moving into someone else’s house so it wasn’t like I could bring my dogs with me. While my mom went inside the store I had to say goodbye to my two best friends, not being sure if I’d ever see them again.

This was them around the time.

Dixie and Roxy. The best duo I ever knew.

I cried.

A lot.

When she returned I did my best to put on a brave, tear free face while we drove over to the lot where the cars were kept.

“Well, I don’t want to cry so bye.” she said. We hugged briefly and she was gone, taking my buddies with her.

I lost it after that. I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw her car moving further away. By this time tomorrow she’d be across the country and out of my life. I drove through the tears and made my way over to the new house where I’d be staying to deposit my mattress and a few other things. After that, I went back to school.

I put my my “mask” back on and did my best to pretend all was fine.