THE STORY OF RAYDONRAVEN

y name is Jon, but most of the time I go by RaydonRaven, or just RR. I’m 22 and I live in Kansas. This is my story, so far.

I suppose I should start my story when I was in second grade. I actually enjoyed school until the second grade, because that was the year my teacher would stand me up in front of the class, have all the students stop what they were doing, and humiliate me with everyone watching.

I’m assuming that by seeing the teacher do this to me, all the other students got it into their mind that it was alright to humiliate me... because they did it relentlessly from then on. I started dreading going to school. By the end of third grade, I was getting into fights and being sent to the principal’s office almost on a daily basis, and my friends had all turned their backs on me.

My grades dropped from an 'A' average to a 'D' by the time I was in Jr. High. I started to think that no one cared about me. It didn’t matter where I was—at home, at school, at youth group—there was always someone humiliating me. It was in seventh grade that I started relying on music and books to help me escape from it all. When I wasn’t reading, I was listening to one of my cassettes or CDs.

Unfortunately for me, it was also in seventh grade that my family got internet access. Before seventh grade was out, I had begun to rely on internet porn to help me escape as well. Although it has only recently come to light that I am bipolar, looking back I can see that I have been bipolar for about as long as I can remember. It wasn’t too long after I developed an addiction to porn that a full-blown depression started to take hold, actually overshadowing my bipolar symptoms.

In the eighth grade I was even more depressed and no one noticed. I started thinking about suicide. When I was home alone I would play with a knife, see how sharp it was, and run it tentatively across my arms. Even then, I was attempting to keep up the pretense of being some uber-Christian; being raised in a Christian home I didn’t want my family to know what I was doing.

That summer, we got a phone call from a family we used to know before we moved. My oldest friend, Nick, had killed himself a few days earlier. Mom told me and I pretended it didn’t bother me. I used the fact that I hadn’t seen him in a few years as an excuse. But on the inside I was devastated. I spent the rest of the summer kind of dazed.

That fall, I started high school. Things continued on much the way they had for the last several years. But this new guy started coming to youth group, and before I knew it we were friends. I actually started looking forward to going to youth group just so I could goof off with him.

Early that summer, my grandfather passed away, less than week before we were going to go visit him. At this point, I started to get angry with God. He had taken my friend, and He had taken my grandpa under cruel circumstances.

My sophomore year in high school started, and my friend in youth group didn’t show up. I shrugged it off as nothing. The next week, the youth leader had a grim look on his face. I just knew what he was going to say and I didn’t want to hear it. My friend, Jesse, had hung himself the week before. Something inside of me snapped; I felt my anger for God turn into hatred in an instant. My friend had been excited about turning 17 soon because he was going to join the Marines and get away from his drunk, abusive father. I remember sitting at youth group, asking God how He could let him do that with only a few weeks before his birthday.

I gave up any and all pretenses of being a Christian at that point—I stopped going to youth group and I stopped going to church. I figured that since God seemed so willing to turn His back on my friends and I, I was going to turn my back on Him.

Early the next year, my grandma, who had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for as long as I’d known her, passed away. I tried to get time off from work to go to the funeral, and the response I got from my supervisor I will not repeat. Ten days later, my other grandfather passed away. This time I just tried to get a few days off so I could mourn on my own, and I essentially got the same obscene response. This made me mad enough that I stopped going to work and got fired.

A few months later, one of my teachers at school demanded that I tell him what science class I was taking next year, because he “didn’t want me taking chemistry or physics or something, because he’s so stupid he’d blow up the whole school!” I honestly think it a miracle I didn’t stand up, pick up my textbook, and hit him in the head with it. Instead I dropped out of school.

I spent the next few months just lying around the house contemplating suicide. I finally decided that I was going to go through with it. I waited until I was home alone on night, put on a CD, and worked up the feelings I needed to carry it out. Finally, I picked up my knife and ran it up my arm.
Nothing.

The knife, which had been razor sharp a week and a half earlier, was completely dull. I went in search of a sharper knife and could not find one anywhere. Finally I gave up my search and retreated to my room again.

I recall sitting on my bed, slowly realizing what I had become. I remember that the full force of that realization hit me halfway through the song "Scarecrow" by Skillet. I broke down, I cried for most of an hour. By the time the week was out, I had accepted Christ, gave up everything to Him.

Much to my chagrin, things didn’t get better. I stayed depressed, I stayed angry, and I held onto my hatred for God. I realized I needed God, that I needed to give everything up to Him, but I couldn’t; some part of me wanted to stay how I was. So I stayed that way. I finished high school at home, and went on to college.

By this time, I had started to come out of my depression. I still hated God for what he had put me through, and my symptoms of bipolar disorder started to worsen and I finally started to notice them. During my first day at college, to my absolute surprise, this girl started talking to me. She was the prettiest redhead I had ever seen, much less met, and she was actually talking to me. Before I knew it, we were out walking around town and time just FLEW by, it was curfew before we realized it. I went back to my room, not really believing that I had just spent more than 4 hours talking to her. I was hoping this meant that things were going to get better.

For the next few months, we did all kinds of stuff together, and just talked and talked and talked. Then my friend from home came for a visit and he wanted to meet her. Feeling that it would be a bad idea, I tried to convince him to leave since she was at work. He was adamant about meeting her though, so he stayed.

After a few hours, when she got back from work, he asked if he could talk to her alone for a few minutes. When they were done talking she walked right past me and went into the dorms, then my friend left, but not before telling me to be careful.

The next week was terrible; she avoided me all week, until she finally came looking to talk with me one night. We walked down to the park in silence and I knew something was up. When we got there, she told me everything my friend had told her and asked me if I had feelings for her. I panicked. After a second, I just came out and lied. I told her that no, I didn’t have feelings for her. It’s her reaction to that which still gets to me. I saw a flash of dejection on her face before she forced a smile and said “well good.” Things were never the same between us and we drifted apart.

Late that semester I made a really good friend—who it turned out—was bipolar also. But college did not last long for me. I was still depressed, angry, and bitter and it showed. I flunked out and spent the next year slipping back into depression.

After that year though, things moved fast. I found myself with a job that required I go to work at 3am, my best friend moved to Michigan, I found myself with an online friend (who has become my closest), I was able to get over my depression, realized just how bad my bipolar disorder symptoms have gotten, and with much effort and pain, have kicked my addiction to porn and was finally able to let go of my hatred for God. After I gave up that hatred, I gave God complete control of my life and I’ve never been happier. The last few months have been a flurry of writing, going back to college, and getting help for my bipolar disorder.

God has brought me and the woman I'm going to marry together. I'm praying several times a day and getting closer to God everyday. I've also figured out what God wants me to do. I will be going to school to study music and creative writing, and sometime in the future, Shonda and I are going to start reaching out to lonely, rejected and ostracized teens and young adults with music; that's something that God is calling both of us to do.

I don't remember when it was I embraced Goth. I think it was sometime in junior high, but I've blocked out most of my memories from before I dropped out of school. I do remember hanging out with other Goths in high school and being made fun of for it there and at youth group.

Ok, after thinking about it and dredging up old memories, my embrace of Goth came about from a couple of different influences. Some of it had to do with being exposed to dark and gothic literature at a fairly young age. In junior high, I had a college grade reading level, so I read stuff that most high school students never do, stuff like Frankenstein, Frank L. Baum's Oz series, Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, and a LOT of Edgar Alan Poe.

Some of it also had to do with being influenced by a Goth I met in junior high. He came to our school with a high school group one day and I just thought he was the coolest and one of the nicest people I'd ever met. He was about the only person then who accepted me as me. I don't remember his name, or where he was from.

Most of it though, has to do with the fact that by the end of my freshman year in high school, I was completely fed up with the world. I didn't want anything to do with politics, tradition, Christianity, as I knew it, or those I saw as hypocritical. As I started looking for like-minded people, I was drawn toward Goth. Goth seemed to be composed primarily of people who could understand the kind of pain I went through and was going through and rejected the world like I did.

As I started getting into it and saw what passed for "normal" in most Gothic circles, I rejected Goth too. I kept my interest in Goth a secret. I wrote in secret, listened to my music in secret, even read certain books in secret. That is until I discovered the Christian Goth movement.

I know that there are many out there who wouldn't consider me a Goth, but I don't care. God saved my life and took me from the dark, but He has put me back to be, at the least, a glint of light to those still in the shadows. I don't do what I do, dress how I dress, listen to what I listen to, so I can look like and be accepted as a Goth by others. I am the man that God wants me to be, and I will do what He wants me to do, regardless of what others might think.

In Christ,
RaydonRaven

What follows is some poetry from RaydonRaven

I hated You, You loved me.
You let me suffer through all that abuse, and I hated You for it.
Still You loved me.
You let my friends die, I hated You more.
And You loved me.
I wanted to die, hated everyone and everything, You above all.
You loved me more than ever.

You loved me, I hated You.
You set Your plan in motion.
I hated You.
You put an end to the torment.
Still I hated you.
You gave me better friends than ever.
And I hated you.
You made me read one night, “If the world hates you, you know that it hated me first.”
I... hate...
“If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own. But because you do not belong to the world and I have chosen you out of it, the world will hate you.”
I...

Tale of RR
For years, walking in silence,
Ignoring the taunts, the torment,
His face never changing.
For years, retreating in his room,
Closing the door and crying,
Always asking ‘God, why me?

Walking in silence, hiding his anger,
Fighting off his depression,
But losing the battle.
Darkness ensues, hatred for God,
Thoughts of violence,
Attempts at suicide.

Friend after friend, gone.
Nothing to lean on,
No one to talk with.
Hopeless, desperate,
He cries out, begging,
Pleading for help.

Years later, still he walks in silence,
Ignoring people he passes,
His face rarely changing.
Years later, retreating to his room,
Closing the door and praying,
Always asking ‘what’s next God?’

Walking in silence, hiding no anger,
Fighting no depression,
The battle long over.
Darkness still, no hatred for God,
No thoughts of murder,
No attempts at suicide.

Friend after friend, gained,
Leaning on God,
Talking with a few.
Hopeful, no desperation,
He cries out, joyful,
Thanking God.

Silently I Walk
Silently I walk,
Ignoring passersby,
But feeling them gawk,
And not caring why.

Step after step,
I keep going on,
Past prep after prep,
Who wish I was gone.

Dressed in black,
Scared of nothing,
Finally I am back,
To finish my schooling.

- RaydonRaven